F- 


THE  STORY  OF 
RAPID  TRANSIT 


BY 


BECKLES   WILLSON 


*         •      3 

•,      >"        '      "         '        ; 


•  • 

. 


• 

1  . 
. 


WITH  THIRTY-SEVEN  ILLUSTRATIONS 


NEW    YORK 

D     APPLETON    AND    COMPANY 
1903 


f    ,       ,    .  , 

'    c     ' 


COPYRIGHT,  1903,  BY 
D.   APPLETON   AND   COMPANY 

All  rights  reserved 


Published   October,    1903 


PREFACE 


IT  has  been  said  that  "when  the  nineteenth 
century  takes  its  place  with  the  other  centuries 
in  the  chronological  charts  of  the  future,  it  will, 
if  it  need  a  symbol,  almost  inevitably  have  as  that 
symbol,  a  steam-engine  running  upon  a  rail- 
way." * 

The  characteristic  material  problem  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  was  Rapid  Transit,  and  it  prom- 
ises to  be  one  of  the  most  prominent  sciences  of 
the  twentieth.  To  it  is  consecrated  to-day  more 
capital,  labor,  and  ingenuity  than  to  all  the  other 
sciences  together.  It  is  an  end  to  which  the 
greatest  inventors  and  most  skilful  engineers  have 
consecrated  their  talents.  Whether  it  be  in  the 
form  of  the  railway — steam  or  electric — the 
steamship,  the  telegraph,  with  or  without  wires, 
the  telephone,  the  automobile,  ever  great  and  still 
greater  velocity  of  locomotion  or  communication 
is  the  goal  in  view.  And  what  victories  have 
been  won  over  the  sluggish  forces  of  nature! — 
what  obstacles  overcome!  The  whole  story  is  so 
modern  that,  like  Electricity  and  Photography, 
we  can  trace  its  beginnings  not  further  back  than 
the  time  of  our  grandsires. 

In  this  story  of  the  rise  and  progress  of  the 

*H.  G.  Wells:   "Anticipations." 
5 


0  PREFACE 

science  of  Rapid  Transit,  with  its  ever  new  de- 
vices, its  monuments  of  engineering,  and  its  bil- 
lions of  capital,  there  is  perceptible  a  kind  of 
magic.  The  acceleration  from  decade  to  decade 
since  the  era  of  the  mail-coaches  may  here  be 
plainly  noted;  and  the  reader  will  doubtless  find 
the  comparison  of  the  actual  contemporary  time- 
tables of  the  journeys  between  London  and  Edin- 
burgh, Paris  and  New  York,  with  those  of  to-day, 
a  source  of  interest  and  information. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.     BEGINNINGS  OF  RAPID  TRANSIT — THE  MAIL- 
COACH         ii 

II.     THE  FIRST  RAILWAYS     .....  25 

III.  STEAM  NAVIGATION 

IV.  DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  RAILWAY    ...  64 
V.     THE  TELEGRAPH — WIRELESS  TELEGRAPHY      .  96 

VI.     AERIAL  NAVIGATION — HOMING  PIGEONS         .  114 
VII.     OCEAN    TELEGRAPHY  —  THE     TELEPHONE  — 

PNEUMATIC  TUBES — POSTAL  SYSTEMS        .  136 

VIII.     THE  BICYCLE — MOTOR  CYCLES       .        .        .  148 

IX.     MOTOR  CARRIAGES 0  161 

X.     STREET  RAILWAYS 182 

7 


LIST   OF    ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

A  Modern  Motor  Car  .....  Frontispiece 

The  Earliest  Hackney  Coach          .....  16 

The  Cabriolet       ........  20 

An  Early  Stage-coach            ......  23 

Old  English  Coach—"  The  Flying  Coach"          .          .27 
Globular-shaped  Mail-coach,  Used  in  Continental  Eu- 
rope a  Century  Ago        ......  29 

One  of  Stephenson's  Passenger  Engines  35 
The  Experiment,  the  First  Railway  Passenger  Coach, 

1825                37 

The  Rocket            ........  39 

The  Royal  George          .......  40 

Liverpool  and  Manchester  Railway — First  Class,  1830  42 
Liverpool  and  Manchester  Railway — Second  and  Third 

Class,  1831 42 

Steam  versus  Horses    .......  45 

The  Comet            ........  48 

The  Great  Western       .          .          .         .          .          ^         .  51 

The  Deutschland          .......  63 

Facsimile  Time-table,  1839            .....  67 

A  Diligence          ........  69 

The  Royal  Train  in  1843,  London  and  Birmingham     .  72 
Great  Western  Railway — The  Flying  Dtitchman.         .  77 
Interior   of    a   Third-class   Dining-car,    Midland  Rail- 
way   8 1 

The  First  Electric  Railway                       ,          .          .         .  93 

Earliest  Advertisement  of  the  Electric  Telegraph           .  105 
An  Airship  Designed  by  Francis  Lana,  of  Barcelona, 

1670 115 

The  First  Aerial  Voyage      .         .          .          .          .         .117 

Santos-Dumont  Rounding  the  Eiffel  Tower  in  His  Air- 
ship   134 

The  "  Dandy-horse  " 149 

James's  Steam-carriage         ......  165 

Steam  Road  Coach,  1833     ......  166 


io  LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

F.  Hill's  Steam-carriage  Running  between  London  and 

Birmingham,  1839-1843  .....  168 
An  Early  Gas-propelled  Vehicle  .....  171 
A  Modern  Motor  Car  (diagram)  .  .  .  .  .175 
The  First  Omnibus  .  .  .  .  .  .  .183 

New  Patent  Safety  Cab 184 

The  Thames  Tunnel    ......«,        187 

Elevated  Railway,  New  York       .         .          .          .         .189 

Moving  Platform,  Paris  Exhibition,  1900      .         .         .       197 


THE 

» 

STORY    OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 


• — —  t 

>».•>.,        -  -  *    '     *        >  '    >     ,  1 

CHAPTER    I 

BEGINNINGS  OF  RAPID  TRANSIT— THE  MAIL- 
COACH 

ECONOMY  of  time  was  a  virtue  but  little  prac- 
tised by  our  ancestors.  The  innovator  who  pro- 
posed to  effect  a  saving  of  it  was  regarded  as 
either  a  fool  or  a  revolutionary.  To  a  race  which 
lived  in  the  constant  prospect  of  eternity  this  life 
at  best  was  but  a  "fleeting  show,"  and  any  at- 
tempt to  multiply  its  moments  was  properly 
frowned  upon  as  vanity. 

An  idea  of  seventeenth  century  celerity  may 
be  gained  from  the  fact  that  in  1609  to  send  a 
letter  from  York  to  Oxford  and  obtain  a  reply 
required  a  full  month.  Even  after  the  establish- 
ment of  the  post  in  1660,  correspondence  was  but 
little  expedited.  When  coaches  were  introduced 
it  was  roundly  declared  that  they  would  ruin  the 
country;  and  we  find  in  one  chronicler  a  eulogy 
of  the  old  wagons  of  Master  Stow's  day,  which 
did  not  jog  along  the  highway  at  a  speed  of  four 
miles  an  hour,  but  traveled  easily,  "without  jolt- 
ing men's  bodies  or  hurrying  them  along."  The 
general  advantages  of  rapid  transit,  on  its  com- 

ii 


12  THE   STORY    OF    RAPID    TRANSIT 

mercial  side,  were  not  even  dimly  perceived.  The 
new  stage-coaches  were  condemned  by  the  coun- 
try towns  because  they  would  enable  London  to 
avail  itself  of  a  wider  circle  of  supply  and  demand, 
and  so  injure  their  trade.  In  1673,  it  took  a  full 
\vK-!<  'of,  frivol  to  reach  Exeter  from  London  (the 
fare,  by  the  way,  being  40$.  in  summer  and  455. 
in  winter,  which  was  also  the  tariff  for  the  journey 
irom  the  capital  to  Chester  or  York).  In  1678, 
six  clays  were  required  by  a  six-horse  coach  to 
perform  the  journey  between  Edinburgh  and 
Glasgow  and  return.  Before  the  close  of  the  sev- 
enteenth century  a  similar  vehicle  demanded  two 
days  for  the  journey  from  London  to  Cambridge, 
fifty-seven  miles;  while  another  half-century  was 
to  elapse  before  the  ordinary  journey  to  Oxford 
required  less  time.  All  traveling  was  done  by 
daylight:  when  night  journeys  were  first  intro- 
duced in  1740,  there  were  many  who  foreboded 
ruin  to  the  proprietors  on  account  of  the  innova- 
tion. 

One  who  thought  of  leaving  by  coach  from 
Edinburgh  for  the  British  capital  in  the  middle 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  planned  the  journey 
months  in  advance,  consulted  his  lawyer  and  made 
his  will.  Such  an  adventure  was  not  to  be  em- 
barked upon  lightly,  as  is  testified  by  an  adver- 
tisement in  the  Edinburgh  Conrant  for  1758, 
which  states  that,  "with  God's  permission,"  the 
coach  would  "go  in  ten  days  in  summer  and 
twelve  in  winter."  This  would  now  suffice  to 
carry  a  traveler  from  Edinburgh  to  Chicago  or 
to  Cairo,  with  two  or  three  days  to  spare.  An 
idea  of  what  the  enterprising  projectors  meant  by 
a  "flying-coach"  may  be  derived  from  an  an- 


BEGINNINGS   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT  13 

nouncement  in  1765  that  such  a  vehicle,  drawn 
by  eight  horses,  would  travel  from  London  to 
Dover,  seventy-one  miles,  in  a  single  day. 

But  we  must  remember  that  speed  in  transit 
was  in  those  early  days  dependent  on  something 
more  than  the  mere  will  of  the  coachman  or 
coach-owner.  The  condition  of  the  roads,  not 
merely  in  Great  Britain  but  throughout  Europe 
generally,  made  rapid  locomotion  impossible. 
For  centuries  most  of  the  roads  were  mere 
tracks  across  the  face  of  the  country,  patched 
with  rude  paving  in  the  muddy  places  and  'Very 
noisome  and  tedious  to  travel  on  and  dangerous 
to  all  passengers  and  carriages,"  to  quote  the 
statute  act  for  the  repair  of  the  highways  passed 
in  Mary's  reign. 

We  may  say  that  the  first  effort  in  the  direction 
of  real  improvement  dates  from  the  passing  of  the 
Turnpike  Act  in  1633,  which  premised  that  por- 
tions of  the  Great  North  Road  leading  from  the 
capital  to  York  and  Scotland  were  'Very  ruinous 
and  become  almost  impassable,  insomuch  that  it 
is  become  very  dangerous  to  all  His  Majesty's 
liege  people  to  pass  that  way."  The  toll-gate  is 
an  institution  that  began  in  the  reign  of  Charles 
II. — the  first  turnpike  toll  being  erected  on  the 
road  running  from  Hertfordshire  to  the  counties 
of  Huntingdon  and  Cambridge.  Travelers,  of 
course,  at  first  resisted  the  innovation,  which  was 
designed  for  their  benefit ;  improvement  was  slow7 
and  the  roads  of  England  and  Scotland  a  century 
later  w^ere  but  little  bettered;  indeed,  some  of 
them  grew  worse.  We  could  hardly  require  bet- 
ter testimony  as  to  their  actual  condition  in  1770 
than  is  furnished  by  the  celebrated  Arthur  Young 


14  THE   STORY    OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

in  his  "Tour."  Speaking  of  a  highway  in  Lan- 
cashire, he  declares:  "I  know  not,  in  the  whole 
range  of  language,  terms  sufficiently  expressive 
to  describe  this  infernal  road.  To  look  over  a 
map  and  perceive  that  it  is  the  principal  one,  not 
only  to  some  towns,  but  even  whole  counties, 
one  would  naturally  conclude  it  to  be  at  least 
decent;  but  let  me  most  seriously  caution  all 
travelers  who  may  accidentally  purpose  to  travel 
this  terrible  county  to  avoid  it  as  they  would  the 
devil,  for  a  thousand  to  one  but  they  break  their 
necks  or  their  limbs  by  overthrows  or  breakings 
down.  They  will  here  meet  with  ruts  which  I 
measured,  four  feet  deep,  and  floating  with  mud, 
only  from  a  wet  summer — what,  therefore,  must 
it  be  after  a  winter?  The  only  mending  it  re- 
ceives in  places  is  the  tumbling  in  some  loose 
stones,  which  serve  no  other  purpose  but  jolting 
a  carriage  in  the  most  unbearable  manner.  These 
are  not  merely  opinions,  but  facts;  for  I  actually 
passed  three  carts  broken  down  in  these  eighteen 
miles  of  execrable  memory."  Young  found  else- 
where in  the  north  other  roads  equally  bad,  where 
two  miles  an  hour  would  doubtless  have  been  per- 
formed with  difficulty. 

When  the  original  Government  postal  system 
began — with  headquarters  just  out  of  Eastcheap 
-the  mails  between  London  and  Edinburgh 
took  three  days.  Charles  I.  having  determined 
in  1635  to  mend  the  dilatory  and  imperfect  com- 
munication between  the  two  capitals,  established 
"a  running-  post  or  two,  to  run  night  and  day, 
between  Edinburgh  and  London,  to  go  thither 
and  come  back  again  in  six  days."  With  the 
downfall  of  the  monarchy  this  service  ended,  and 


BEGINNINGS   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT  1  5 


in  1649  we  find  the  city  of  London  inaugurating 
a  northern  post  of  its  own  with  a  regular  staff 
of  runners  and  postmasters. 

The  authority  of  a  single  postal  system  man- 
aged by  the  Government  was  finally  settled  by 
an  Act  passed  in  1656.  The  preamble  showed 
that  "the  erecting  of  one  General  Post  Office  for 
the  speedy  conveying  and  re-carrying  of  letters 
by  post  to  and  from  all  places  within  England, 
Scotland,  and  Ireland,  and  into  several  parts  be- 
yond the  seas,  hath  been  and  is  the  best  means, 
not  only  to  maintain  a  certain  and  constant  inter- 
course of  trade  and  commerce  between  all  the 
said  places,  to  the  great  benefit  of  the  people  of 
these  nations,  but  also  to  convey  the  public  de- 
spatches, and  to  discover  and  prevent  many  dan- 
gerous and  wicked  designs  which  have  been  and 
are  daily  contrived  against  the  peace  and  welfare 
of  this  Commonwealth,  the  intelligence  whereof 
cannot  well  be  communicated  but  by  letter  of 
escript." 

In  1658  the  first  stage-coach  between  London 
and  Edinburgh  was  put  on  the  road,  setting  out 
once  a  fortnight,  and  taking  nearly  that  time  in 
transit.  The  ordinary  method  of  traveling  then, 
and  for  centuries,  was  on  horseback  or  on  foot. 
Coaches  had  been,  it  is  true,  introduced  in  1553, 
but  they  were  little  used  in  the  country,  where, 
in  fact,  the  fearful  condition  of  the  roads  would 
have  restricted  their  use. 

In  London  and  all  the  other  large  towns  the 
width  of  the  streets  prevented  the  use  of  car- 
riages; the  Sedan  chair,  borne  by  porters,  being 
the  polite  mode  of  progression.  In  Charles  I.'s 
reign  horses  were  occasionally  used  as  bearers, 


i6 


THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 


thus  forming  the  earliest  idea  of  the  "Hackney 
coach." 

In  1662  there  were  only  six  stage-coaches  in 
the  whole  kingdom,  and  even  this  number  was 
considered  by  some  of  the  slow-going,  conserva- 
tive citizens  as  just  half-a-dozen  too  many. 

Matters  were  to  be  yet  worse  before  they  were 
bettered,  for  with  the  establishment  of  the  Gen- 


The  Earliest  Hackney  Coach. 


eral  Post  Office  at  the  Restoration  a  lower  stand- 
ard of  despatch  prevailed,  and  six  days,  instead 
of  three,  were  consumed  by  the  mails  between 
London  and  Edinburgh.  Such  a  retrogression 
aroused  Nottingham,  York,  and  other  towns  to 
protest,  and  as  a  consequence  the  King's  post  be- 
came accelerated  to  "three  and  a  half  or  four 
days,"  which  was  a  rate  much  slower  than  that 
which  had  prevailed  thirty  years  before.  Never- 
theless, it  must  be  remembered  that  the  volume 


BEGINNINGS   OF   RAPID    TRANSIT  1 7 

of  mail  business  between  the  two  capitals  was 
very  scanty,  a  hint  of  which  truth  we  may  obtain 
from  the  fact  that,  on  one  occasion  in  1745,  the 
mail  brought  only  a  single  letter  from  the  South 
• — for  the  British  Linen  Company.  On  another 
day  in  the  same  year  only  one  was  received  in 
London — for  Sir  William  Pulteney,  the  banker. 
With  Edinburgh  four  days  from  London  it  was 
on  a  par  with  Constantinople  at  the  present  day. 

Early  in  the  eighteenth  century,  when  the 
mails  were  conveyed  on  horseback  or  in  light 
carts,  and  the  robbery  of  the  mail  was  one  of  the 
most  common  of  crimes,  the  rate  of  traveling  did 
not  often  exceed  four  miles  an  hour.  There  is 
still  to  be  seen  a  time-bill  for  the  year  1717, 
addressed  "to  the  several  postmasters  between 
London  and  East  Grinstead."  It  is  headed, 
"Haste,  haste,  post  haste!"  from  which  the  casual 
reader  might  gather  that  extraordinary  expedi- 
tion would  be  observed.  The  mails,  we  learn, 
departed  "from  the  letter-office  in  London,  July 
7th,  1717,  at  half-an-hour  past  two  in  the  morn- 
ing," and  reached  East  Grinstead,  distant  forty- 
six  miles,  at  half-past  three  in  the  afternoon.  The 
rate,  including  stoppages,  was  a  trifle  over  four 
miles  an  hour.  But  even  in  1766  four  miles  an 
hour  was  regarded  as  the  height  of  postal  celer- 
ity. "Letters  are  conveyed  in  so  short  a  time,  by 
night  as  well  as  by  day,  that  every  twenty-four 
hours  the  post  goes  120  miles,  and  in  five  or  six 
days  an  answer  to  a  letter  may  be  had  from  a 
place  300  miles  from  London."  Letters  were 
despatched  from  London,  as  well  as  received,  at 
all  hours  of  the  day  and  night,  there  being  no 
regularity  in  the  service  until  1784. 


1 8  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

As  a  sample  of  speed  in  1734  we  may  mention 
that  in  that  year  John  Dale  advertised  that  a 
coach  would  take  the  road  from  Edinburgh  for 
London  "towards  the  end  of  each  week,  to  be 
performed  in  nine  days,  or  three  days  sooner  than 
any  coach  on  the  road."  Twenty  years  later  the 
pace,  so  far  from  having  improved,  was  worse, 
inasmuch  as  it  took  ten  days  in  summer  and 
twelve  in  winter,  and  in  1763,  the  coach  set  out, 
it  is  stated,  once  a  month,  and  "took  a  fortnight, 
if  the  weather  was  favorable."  The  cause  of  this 
degeneracy  is  doubtless  to  be  found  in  the  prac- 
tise of  post-chaise  traveling  in  parties — by  means 
of  which  a  few  travelers  shared  a  vehicle  together 
and  secured  greater  speed  and  cheapness.  A  jour- 
ney to  York  was  regularly  done  in  four  days  ("if 
God  permit"). 

In  1742  the  Oxford  stage-coach  left  London 
at  seven  in  the  morning  and  reached  Uxbrldge  at 
mid-day.  It  arrived  at  High  Wycombe  at  five  in 
the  evening,  resting  there  for  the  night,  for  there 
was  no  traveling  in  the  dark  hours,  and  proceed- 
ing on  at  the  same  rate  on  the  following  day. 

In  1758,  however,  there  came  an  improvement. 
Up  to  that  year  the  Great  North  Mail  set  out 
thrice  a  week  occupying  eighty-seven  hours  in  its 
northward  journey  and  not  less  than  131  hours 
on  its  return  south.  The  cause  of  the  latter  ex- 
cess was  the  stoppages  made  at  Berwick  and 
Newcastle,  ranging  from  three  hours  at  the  for- 
mer to  twenty-four  at  the  latter.  An  Edinburgh 
merchant,  George  Chalmers,  a  sufferer  by  these 
delays,  entered  into  correspondence  with  the  offi- 
cials, and  after  pointing  out  that  the  stoppages 
were  quite  superfluous,  induced  them  to  avoid 


BEGINNINGS   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT  19 

the  old,  long  route  via  Thome  and  York  for  that 
by  Boroughbridge,  thereby  shortening  the  jour- 
ney by  twelve  miles.  This  resulted  in  the  time- 
table being  amended,  so  that  the  journey  was  now 
achieved  in  eighty-two  hours  to  and  eighty-five 
from  Edinburgh.  Furthermore,  Chalmers  pre- 
vailed upon  the  Government  to  run  the  mails 
six  times  weekly.  The  Government  recognized 
Chalmers's  services  by  making  him  a  grant  of 
£600. 

It  was  about  the  same  time  (1767)  that  Henry 
Homer  was  congratulating  his  countrymen  on 
the  vast  improvements  which  he  had  witnessed 
in  his  lifetime.  To  the  condition  of  the  roads  and 
the  difficulties  of  internal  communication  he  at- 
tributed the  backward  state  of  the  country  in  the 
reign  of  Queen  Anne. 

*-W 

The  trade  of  the  kingdom  languished  for 
means  of  rapid  transit.  "Few  People,"  he  says, 
"cared  to  encounter  the  Difficulties  which  at- 
tended the  Conveyance  of  Goods  from  the  Places 
where  they  were  manufactured  to  the  Markets 
where  they  were  to  be  disposed  of.  ...  The 
Natural  Produce  of  the  Country  was  with  Diffi- 
culty circulated  to  supply  the  Necessities  of  those 
Counties  and  Trading  Towns  which  wanted,  and 
to  dispose  of  the  Superfluity  of  others  which 
abounded.  .  .  .  We  are  now  released,"  he 
adds,  "from  treading  the  cautious  steps  of  our 
Forefathers  and  our  very  Carriages  travel  with 
almost  \vinged  expedition  between  every  Town 
of  consequence  in  the  Kingdom  and  the  Metrop- 
olis. .  .  .  Despatch,  which  is  the  very  Life 
and  Soul  of  Business,  becomes  daily  more  attain- 
able by  the  free  Circulation  opening  in  every 


2O 


THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 


Channel  what  is  adapted  to  it.  .  .  .  There 
never  was  a  more  astonishing  Revolution  accom- 
plished in  the  internal  System  of  any  Country 
than  has  been  within  the  Compass  of  a  few  years 


r<U 
"3 


U 

<u 


in  that  of  England.  Journies  of  Business  are  per- 
performed  with  more  than  double  Expedition. 
Everything  wears  the  face  of  Dispatch."  In 
Homer's  opinion,  it  was  all  due  to  the  "Refor- 


BEGINNINGS   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT  21 

mation  which  has  been  made  in  our  Publick 
Roads." 

Abroad  the  roads  and  means  of  locomotion 
were,  if  anything,  behind  those  of  England,  the 
newly  introduced  cabriolet  being  a  luxury  for  the 
rich,  and  in  the  more  populous  districts  travel- 
ing was  usually  done  on  foot  or  on  horseback  in 
company,  as  described  by  Defoe  toward  the  end 
of  his  "Robinson  Crusoe."  The  journey  from 
Lisbon  to  Calais  by  land  took  two  months  in 
winter  and  five  or  six  weeks  in  summer. 

While  these  improvements  in  land  carriages 
were  taking  place,  attention  was  also  being  paid 
to  the  provision  of  facilities  for  carriage  by  water. 
Canals  were  cut  to  connect  various  river  basins, 
and  in  1758  the  idea  was  revived  and  finally 
carried  out,  of  connecting  the  Forth  and  the 
Clyde. 

In  1758  Brindly  had  succeeded  in  carrying  out 
the  Duke  of  Bridgwater's  scheme,  and  this  gave 
a  fresh  impetus  to  canal  projects.  The  Duke  was 
the  possessor  of  immense  beds  of  coal  at  Worsley, 
which  could  not  be  profitably  worked  owing  to 
the  cost  of  carriage  to  Manchester.  The  canal 
cut  down  this  cost  to  a  fraction  and  was  the  be- 
ginning of  a  network  of  canals  which  was  soon 
spread  over  England.  It  was  the  Duke  of  Bridg- 
water,  who,  when  asked  his  opinion  of  the  new 
tram-roads,  declared  that  they  meant  "mischief" 
to  the  canal-owners. 

For  those  country  gentlemen  and  citizens  "of 
the  old  school"  who  did  not  see  any  virtue  in 
rapid  transit  a  further  mortification  was  at  hand. 
This  was  the  establishment  of  the  mail-coach 
system  by  Palmer  in  1784.  This  celebrated  advo- 


22  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

cate  of  speed  had  had  his  attention  drawn  to  the 
singular  discrepancy  between  the  average  travel- 
ing rate  of  the  post  and  of  the  coaches.  Letters 
which  left  Bath  on  Monday  night  were  not  de- 
livered in  London  until  two  or  three  o'clock  in 
the  afternoon  of  Wednesday,  and  sometimes 
even  later ;  yet  the  coach  which  left  Bath  on  Mon- 
day afternoon  arrived  in  London  early  enough 
for  the  delivery  of  parcels  by  ten  o'clock  the 
next  morning.  Despatch  was  in  many  cases  of 
such  importance  to  the  Bath  tradesmen  that,  al- 
though the  postage  was  only  threepence,  they 
willingly  paid  two  shillings  to  forward  their  let- 
ters to  the  capital  in  the  form  of  a  coach  parcel. 
Elsewhere  Palmer  found  the  same  state  of  affairs. 
The  post  which  left  London  on  Monday  night  or 
early  Tuesday  morning  did  not  reach  Warwick, 
Worcester,  or  Birmingham  until  Wednesday 
morning;  and  the  Exeter  post  not  until  Thurs- 
day morning,  while  letters  were  five  days  in  pass- 
ing from  London  to  Glasgow.  It  was  now  pro- 
posed to  alter  all  this  and  establish  a  regular 
mail-coach  service  all  over  the  kingdom,  a  project 
which  met  with  the  utmost  opposition  from  the 
authorities,  who  failed  to  see  "why  the  post 
should  be  the  swiftest  conveyance  in  England," 
and  regarded  the  scheme  of  bringing  the  Bristol 
mail  to  London  in  sixteen  or  eighteen  hours  as 
"altogether  visionary."  Nevertheless,  Pitt  was 
resolved  to  allow  Palmer's  plan  to  be  put  into 
execution,  and  the  first  mail-coach  left  London 
for  Bristol  on  the  evening  of  August  24, 
1784.  At  the  end  of  a  dozen  years  it  was  found 
that  the  greater  part  of  the  mails  were  conveyed 
in  one-half  the  previous  time;  in  many  cases  one- 


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24  THE   STORY    OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

third,   and  in   some  of  the   cross-posts   in   one- 
fourth  of  the  previous  time. 

Although  it  became  apparent  after  the  intro- 
duction of  railways  that  the  days  of  the  mail- 
coach  system  were  numbered,  yet  coaches  were 
not  entirely  superseded  on  the  great  highways 
for  many  years.  In  1832,  according  to  the  Lon- 
don-Edinburgh time-table  for  that  year,  the 
coach  left  the  Post  Office  at  8  P.M.,  reached 
Grantham  at  7.23  the  following  morning,  Don- 
caster  at  1. 12  P.M.,  York  at  4.54  P.M.,  Newcastle 
at  1.50  A.M.,  and  Edinburgh  at  2.23  P.M.  The 
whole  journey  of  397^4  miles  was  thus  made  in 
forty-two  hours  twenty-three  minutes.  The  "up" 
mail  was  somewhat  slower,  occupying  forty-five 
hours  thirty-nine  minutes,  but  both  were  equally 
punctual  in  arrivals  and  departures  en  route,  so 
that  it  has  been  said  that  the  farmers  used  to  set 
their  clocks  and  watches  by  the  mail-coaches. 

Yet  high  speed  was  not  yet  gained.  In  1751 
it  took  twenty-four  hours  to  go  from  London  to 
Dover:  thirty  years  later  it  could  be  done  in  the 
course  of  the  same  day,  and  in  1802  Lord  Camp- 
bell tells  us  that  he  started  from  the  ;<White 
Bear,"  Piccadilly,  at  4  A.M.,  reaching  Dover  at 
9  P.M.,  seventeen  hours,  including  an  hour's  stop- 
page for  dinner  at  Canterbury. 

Porter,  in  his  "Progress  of  the  Nation,"  states 
that  he  "well  remembers  leaving  the  town  of  Gos- 
port  (in  1798)  at  one  o'clock  of  the  morning  in 
the  Telegraph,  then  considered  a  fast  coach,  and 
arriving  at  the  Golden  Cross,  Charing  Cross,  at 
eight  in  the  evening;  thus  occupying  nineteen 
hours  in  traveling  eighty  miles,  being  at  the  rate 
of  rather  more  than  four  miles  an  hour." 


THE   FIRST   RAILWAYS  25 

In  1798  the  Holyhead  mail  left  London  at  eight 
at  night  and  arrived  in  Shrewsbury  between  ten 
and  eleven  the  following  night,  taking  twenty- 
seven  hours  to  run  162  miles,,  About  this  time, 
too,  there  \vas  a  coach  on  the  road  between 
Shrewsbury  and  Chester  known  as  the  Shrews- 
bury and  CJicstcr  Highflyer.  It  started  from 
the  former  town  at  eight  in  the  morning  and 
arrived  at  Chester  (a  distance  of  forty  miles)  at 
the  same  hour  in  the  evening. 


CHAPTER  II 
THE   FIRST   RAILWAYS 

SPEED  in  locomotion  now  began  to  be  publicly 
considered.  The  performances  of  the  crack  mail- 
coaches  were  watched  with  that  interest  which 
to-day  occasionally  attends  the  journeys  of  an 
"ocean  greyhound  or  an  express  train  to  the 
north. 

"It  might  have  been  supposed,"  \vrites  Porter, 
"that  to  attain  so  great  a  rate  of  speed  as  ten 
miles  an  hour,  the  personal  safety  of  passengers 
would  be  further  endangered,  but  the  very  con- 
trary is  the  fact,  so  that  notwithstanding  the 
rapidity  with  which  we  are  whirled  along,  the 
number  of  accidents  is  actually  lessened,  a  result 
produced  by  the  better  construction  of  the  car- 
riages .  .  .  and  the  superior  character  of  the 
drivers."  * 


*  "  Seated  on  the  old  mail-coach,"  wrote  De  Quincey,  "we 
needed  no  evidence  out  of  ourselves  to  indicate  the  velocity. 
We  heard  our  speed,  we  saw  it,  we  felt  it  ...  and  this 


26  THE   STORY   OF    RAPID    TRANSIT 

Sportsmen  regarded  these  achievements  as  af- 
fording them  exciting  entertainment,  but  the 
mercantile  part  of  the  community  were  not  slow 
to  perceive  that  the  increased  speed  had  a  con- 
cern for  them.  Both  classes  recognized  that  bet- 
ter roads  were  necessary:  Parliament  became 
aroused,  and  Telford  and  Macadam,  by  their  im- 
proved methods  of  road-making,  paved  the  way, 
literally,  for  more  rapid  locomotion.  By  the  use 
of  broken  granite,  ashes,  and  burnt  clay,  hundreds 
of  miles  of  roads  in  the  kingdom  became  trans- 
formed, and  it  was  not  long  before  it  was  seen 
that  one  horse  on  a  level  track  could  do  as  much 
work  as  four  on  a  common  road. 

The  maximum  speed  obtainable  by  the  mail- 
coach  on  a  good  road  had  been  reached.  When 
the  era  of  railways  dawned  there  were  nearly 
3,000  stage-coaches  in  operation — of  which 
number  about  half  plied  out  of  and  into  London 
— and  about  100  mail-coaches.  In  his  coach 
system  the  Englishman  took  a  natural  pride,  es- 
pecially upon  comparing  it  with  that  of  France. 
In  no  other  country  was  there  such  promptitude 
of  arrival  and  departure,  or  such  a  volume  of 
transportation  traffic. 

For  instance,  the  Edinburgh  mail  ran  400 
miles  in  forty  hours,  stoppages  included,  which 
was  at  the  rate  of  nearly  eleven  miles  an  hour. 

•/ 

A  coach  to  Exeter,  the  Herald,  went  over  its 
ground,  173  miles,  in  twenty  hours,  although  the 
country  was  hilly ;  and  the  Devonport  mail  per- 

speed  was  not  the  product  of  blind  insensate  agencies,  that 
had  no  sympathy  to  give,  but  was  incarnated  in  the  fiery  eye- 
balls of  the  noblest  among  brutes,  in  his  dilated  nostril, 
spasmodic  muscles  and  thunder-beating  hoofs." 


THE   FIRST   RAILWAYS 


formed   its    journey,    227   miles,   in    twenty-two 
hours.       Of  course  this  increase  of  speed  was 


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considered  alarming  by  those  who  had  been  ac- 
customed to  the  old-fashioned  slow  coaches,  and 


28  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

the  speed  at  which  the  new  vehicles  traveled 
was  regarded  as  a  menace  to  human  life. 

Nevertheless,  there  were  a  body  of  men  cry- 
ing progress,  men  like  Anderson  and  Gray,  who 
declared  that  the  commercial  future  of  the  coun- 
try depended  upon  rapid  transit,  and  that  if  rail- 
roads with  steam  locomotives  were  employed  it 
would  even  be  possible  to  attain  a  velocity  of 
twenty  miles  an  hour.  Upon  this  proposal  the 
utmost  ridicule  was  cast,  especially  by  the  Quar- 
terly Rcviciv,  which  assured  its  readers  that  the 
people  "would  as  soon  suffer  themselves  to  be 
fired  off  upon  one  of  Congreve's  ricochet  rockets 
as  trust  themselves  to  the  mercy  of  such  a  ma- 
chine (a  high-pressure  engine)  and  going  at  such 
a  rate  (eighteen  or  twenty  miles  an  hour)." 
Criticizing  the  project  of  the  London  and  Wool- 
wich Railroad,  the  Quarterly  backed  old  Father 
Thames  against  it  for  any  sum,  and  expressed 
the  hope  that  Parliament  would  "in  all  railroads 
it  may  sanction,  limit  the  speed  to  eight  or  nine 
miles  an  hour,  which  is  as  great  as  can  be  vent- 
ured upon  with  safety."  Yet  at  eight  or  nine 
miles  an  hour  the  cry  was  still  "we  move  too 
slowly — unless  we  can  transport  our  coal  and 
iron — our  goods  and  passengers  more  quickly, 
we  are  giving  hostages  to  fortune  and  will  surely 
not  progress  as  we  ought  to  progress." 

Reflecting  upon  it  now,  it  seems  strange  that 
so  obvious  an  idea  as  a  tram  or  railway  had  not 
occurred  to  mankind  at  an  earlier  period  in  its 
history.  It  probably  did,  but  mankind  was  not 
ready  for  it :  there  was  nothing  to  be  served  by 
an  increase  of  speed.  Apparently,  few  cared  to 
move  quickly;  with  us  in  the  twentieth  century 


THE   FIRST   RAILWAYS 

velocity  of  motion  is  an  end  in  itself,  as  witness 
skating,  tobogganing,  and  the  switchback  rail- 


o 


way— to  say  nothing  of  cycling  and  motoring, 
which  do  lead  us  somewhere.      It  is  true  Dr. 


3O  THE   STORY    OF    RAPID   TRANSIT 

Samuel  Johnson  extolled  the  delights  of  post- 
chaise  traveling  at  the  exciting  velocity  of  ten 
miles  an  hour;  but  celerity  of  movement  seems, 
even  sometimes  in  warfare,  to  have  been  an  un- 
important and  therefore  unconsidered  factor. 
Napoleon  extended  the  principle  of  rapid  transit 
to  those  armies  which  astonished  Europe  about 
the  same  time  that  England  was  bewildered  by 
the  news  that  a  journey  between  London  and 
Edinburgh  could  be  done  in  less  than  two  days. 

The  actual  inventor  of  railways  is  unknown — 
most  probably  the  idea  was  contributed  to  by 
many.  Roger  North  mentions  a  sort  of  wooden 
tram-line  existing  in  the  neighborhood  of  New- 
castle-on-Tyne  prior  to  1676.  "The  manner 
of  the  carriage,"  says  he,  "is  by  laying  rails  of 
timber  from  the  colliery  down  to  the  river  ex- 
actly straight  and  parallel ;  and  bulky  carts  are 
made  with  four  rowlets  fitting  these  rails, 
whereby  the  carnage  is  so  easy  that  one  horse 
will  draw  down  four  or  five  chaldrons  of  coal, 
and  is  an  immense  benefit  to  the  coal-mer- 
chants." 

It  was  soon  discovered  that  one  grave  disad- 
vantage attended  the  use  of  wood  for  the  con- 
struction of  the  rails — its  liability  to  wear. 
Wherefore,  instead  of  wooden  rails,  flat  iron 
bars  were  employed,  nailed  to  the  sleepers  in  the 
same  fashion  as  the  timber  rails.  This  change  in 
construction  was  found  to  work  well,  there  being 
less  friction  to  overcome  on  the  iron  than  on  the 
wooden  rails.  In  other  cases,  stone  was  em- 
ployed in  the  construction  of  these  tramways, 
sometimes  to  form  the  rails,  but  more  often  the 
sleepers.  A  subsequent  improvement  was  made 


THE   FIRST   RAILWAYS  31 

(in  1789)  in  the  iron  rails,  by  forming  what  is 
known  as  an  edge  rail.  The  advantage  of  this 
was  that  neither  wheel  nor  rail  became  clogged 
with  dirt,  a  condition  inseparable  from  fiat  rails. 

Dr.  James  Anderson,  late  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  recommended  the  construction  of  rail- 
ways for  the  purpose  of  conveying  agricultural 
produce  from  one  part  of  a  farm  to  another.  At 
a  later  date  he  proposed  the  general  extension 
of  railways  or  tram-roads  throughout  the  king- 
dom. The  carriages  were  of  course  to  be 
drawn  by  horses.  "Suppose,"  said  he,  writing 
in  1 80 1,  long  before  the  introduction  of  the 
steam  locomotive,  "a  railway  were  brought 
from  the  wharfs  to  Bishopsgate  Street,  .  .  . 
all  the  wagons  to  be  made  of  one  size  and  form, 
each  capable  of  containing  one  ton  of  sugar,  or 
other  goods  of  similar  gravity.  Let  the  body 
of  each  of  these  wagons  be  put  upon  a  frame 
that  rests  upon  the  two  axles  of  the  four  wheels, 
calculated  to  move  only  upon  the  railway,  and 
let  each  of  these  wagons  be  loaded  with  goods 
which  are  to  go  to  the  same  warehouse  or  its 
vicinity.  The  whole  of  the  wagons  being  thus 
loaded,  they  are  moved  forward  till  they  came 
to  the  end  of  the  road,  at  which  place  they  should 
be  made  to  pass  under  a  crane." 

The  crane  would  lift  the  wagon  upon  another 
truck,  formed  for  street  use,  and  when  emptied 
at  the  close  of  the  day  returned  to  the  railway 
truck,  which  returns  to  its  point  of  departure. 
Anderson  believed  that  this  method  of  distribu- 
tion, instead  of  the  old  and  cumbersome  carter 
system,  would  result  in  a  great  saving  of  money, 
time,  and  labor.  "The  convenience  of  such 


32  THE   STORY   OF  RAPID   TRANSIT 

roads  would  be  very  great  from  the  circumstance 
of  having  separate  movable  wagons  as  above 
stated.  One  separate  wagon  or  more  could  be 
thus  left  at  any  place  on  the  road,  and  others 
taken  up  in  their  stead,  like  passengers  in  a 
stage-coach,  without  disturbing  the  others. 
.  .  .  On  the  same  plan  it  is  certainly  very  prac- 
ticable to  carry  roads  of  a  similar  description 
from  London  to  Bath." 

Soon  afterward  tram-roads  or  railways  began 
to  spread  over  the  face  of  the  country,  more 
especially  in  the  northern  counties,  but  as  yet 
no  one  contemplated  the  employment  of  tram- 
cars  as  a  substitute  for  stage-coaches,  until  about 
the  era  that  the  locomotive  engine  was  invent- 
ed. The  plan  just  mentioned  of  a  system  of  rail- 
ways, the  motive  power  being  horses,  was  never 
therefore  carried  out,  although  so  late  as  1830, 
four  years  after  the  opening  of  the  Stockton  and 
Darlington  Railway,  it  was  proposed  to  use 
horse-power  on  the  London  and  Birmingham 
Railway,  the  vehicles  being  warranted  to  travel 
at  the  rate  of  eight  miles  an  hour.  In  1801  the 
Surrey  Railway  obtained  an  Act  for  the  con- 
struction of  a  tram-road  for  general  merchan- 
dise from  Wandsworth  to  Croydon,  and  the  line 
proved  a  success,  one  horse  being  able  to  pull 
more  than  fifty  tons,  or  fifty  times  what  could 
be  done  on  an  ordinary  road. 

Soon  after  this  time  James  Gray,  of  Notting- 
ham, visiting  one  of  these  tramways  which  con- 
nected the  mouth  of  a  colliery  with  the  shipping 
wharf,  exclaimed  to  the  engineer  of  the  line : 
"Why  are  not  these  tram-roads  laid  down  all 
over  England,  so  as  to  supersede  our  common 


THE   FIRST   RAILWAYS  33 

roads  and  steam-engines  employed  to  convey 
goods  and  passengers  along  them,  so  as  to 
supersede  horse-power  ?"  The  man's  answer 
was,  "Jllst  propose  that  to  the  nation,  sir,  and 
see  what  you  will  get  by  it !  Why,  sir — you  will 
be  worried  to  death  for  your  pains."  Notwith- 
standing, from  that  moment  Gray  began  to 
preach  the  doctrine  of  tram-roads,  locomotives, 
steam-engines  and  the  superseding  of  horse- 
power. :<It  was  his  thought  by  day;  it  was  his 
dream  by  night.  He  talked  of  it  till  his  friends 
voted  him  an  intolerable  bore.  He  wrote  of  it 
till  the  reviewers  deemed  him  mad." 

Beyond  all  question  the  first  steam  locomo- 
tive engine  which  actually  carried  passengers  on 
common  roads  was  constructed  by  an  ingenious 
French  mechanic,  Nicholas  Joseph  Cugnot,  a 
native  of  Lorraine.  He  was  born  in  1729,  and 
in  his  youth  served  in  Germany  as  a  military 
engineer,  publishing  several  works  on  military 
science.  After  Cugnot's  retirement  from  the 
army,  he  was  enabled,  at  the  public  expense,  to 
build  a  steam-propelled  carriage  to  run  on  com- 
mon roads,  which  was  tried  in  1769  in  the  pres- 
ence of  a  number  of  illustrious  personages.  It 
was  mounted  upon  three  wheels,  the  leading 
wheel  being  driven  by  an  engine  whose  two  pis- 
tons acted  ifpon  it  alternately.  During  Its  first 
run  Cugnot's  machine  carried  four  passengers, 
and  traveled  at  the  rate  of  two  and  a  quarter 
miles  an  hour.  Another  locomotive  from  which 
great  things  were  expected  was  built  in  1770, 
and  made  several  successful  trials  in  the  streets 
of  Paris.  Unluckily,  the  machine  had  the  mis- 
fortune to  meet  with  an  accident ;  it  capsized  at 
3 


34  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

a  street  corner  and  was  appropriated  by  the  po- 
lice, who  locked  it  up  together  with  its  inventor. 
Cugnot,  however,  was  quickly  released,  and  long- 
enjoyed  a  pension  from  the  Government  as  a 
reward  for  his  labors. 

In  England  the  first  practical  idea  of  applying 
steam-power  to  wheeled  carriages  occurred  to 
Dr.  Robison,  by  whom  it  was  communicated  to 
Watt  in  1759.  Some  time  subsequently,  the  lat- 
ter made  a  model  of  a  high-pressure  locomo- 
tive, and  described  its  principle  in  his  fourth 
patent  in  1784,  which,  among  certain  improve- 
ments, specified  "a  portable  steam-engine  and 
machinery  for  moving  wheel-carriages."  His 
friend,  Murdoch,  in  1787  made  an  engine  which 
was  employed  to  drive  a  small  wagon  round  a 
room  at  his  house  at  Redruth  in  Cornwall. 
Amongst  those  who  saw  it  was  Richard  Treve- 
thick,  who  in  1802  took  out  a  patent  for  a  sim- 
ilar invention.  Symington  also  exhibited  a  loco- 
motive in  Edinburgh  in  1787,  and  eight  years 
later  worked  a  steam-engine  on  a  line  of  turn- 
pike-road in  Lanarkshire  and  the  adjoining 
county.  The  locomotive  of  Trevethick  and 
Vivian  in  1802  ran  on  the  Merthyr  tramway, 
and  drew  a  load  of  ten  tons  at  the  rate  of  five 
miles  an  hour.  But  one  of  Trevethick's  loco- 
motives blew  up — an  accident  which  did  much 
to  create  distrust  of  their  use. 

In  the  meantime  George  Stephenson  was 
busy  at  Killingworth  verifying  the  experiments 
of  other  inventors  and  perfecting  his  own.  In 
1816  he  patented  engines  that  would  travel  ten 
miles  an  hour  without  a  load. 

General  discontent  with  the  means  of  inter- 


THE   FIRST   RAILWAYS 


35 


communication  through  the  country  followed 
on  all  this  agitation,  and  rendered  commerce 
restless.  When  Gray  published  his  "Observa- 
tions on  a  Railroad  for  the  Whole  of  Europe," 
in  1820,  he  said,  'Here  is  the  main-spring  of 
the  civilization  of  the  world ;  all  distances  shall 
disappear;  people  will  come  here  from  all  parts 


One  of  Stephenson's  Passenger  Engines. 

of  the  continent  without  danger  and  without 
fatigue ;  distances  will  be  reduced  one-half  ; 
companies  will  be  formed ;  immense  capital  paid 
and  invested ;  the  system  shall  extend  over  all 
countries ;  emperors,  kings  and  governors,  will 
be  its  defenders ;  and  this  discovery  will  be  put 
on  a  par  with  that  of  printing." 

On  September  27,  1825,  a  short  public  rail- 


36  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

way,  sanctioned  after  repeated  delays  by  Act 
of  Parliament,  was  opened  between  Stockton  and 
Darlington,  in  the  county  of  Durham,  a  dis- 
tance of  about  eleven  miles.  By  the  advice  of 
George  Stephenson,  who  had  been  appointed 
engineer  of  the  line,  iron  rails  were  substituted 
for  wood,  and  gradually  gaining  the  confidence 
of  the  directors,  he  prevailed  upon  them  to  em- 
ploy instead  of  horses,  such  a  locomotive  engine 
as  he  had  recently  tried,  and  with  success,  at 
Killingworth  Colliery.  It  was  intended,  of 
course,  solely  for  transporting  coal,  not  passen- 
gers. The  directors,  chiefly  Quakers,  were  ridi- 
culed for  their  decision.  "I  am  sorry  to  find," 
said  Lord  Eldon,  "the  intelligent  people  of  the 
North  country  gone  mad  on  the  subject  of  rail- 
ways." Another  authority  observed  that  he 
would  undertake  to  "eat  all  the  coals  that  your 
railroad  will  carry."  The  farmers  were  told 
they  would  be  ruined,  as  there  would  be  no  de- 
mand for  horses.  Nevertheless,  the  bill  was 
carried,  the  road  was  built  and  at  the  appointed 
hour,  in  the  presence  of  a  great  multitude,  "the 
train  moved  off  at  the  rate  of  from  ten  to  twelve 
miles  an  hour,  with  a  weight  of  eighty  tons,  with 
one  engine — 'No.  i'- -driven  by  George  Ste- 
phenson himself;  after  it  six  wagons  loaded 
with  coals  and  flour ;  then  a  covered  coach,  con- 
taining directors  and  proprietors  ;  next  twenty- 
one  coal  wagons,  fitted  up  for  passengers,  with 
which  they  were  crammed ;  and  lastly,  six  more 
wagons  loaded  with  coals." 

The  results  of  the  opening  of  the  Stockton 
and  Darlington  line  were  in  some  respects  sur- 
prising. Although  the  conveyance  of  passen- 


THE   FIRST   RAILWAYS  37 

gers  had  formed  no  part  of  the  original  scheme, 
yet,  on  the  first  day,  as  we  have  seen,  many  hun- 
dreds of  persons  made  the  excursion,  and  pas- 
sengers soon  insisted  upon  being  taken  regu- 
larly. It  therefore  became  necessary  to  provide 
carriages  adapted  to  their  requirements,  and 
thus  began  the  story  of  the  railway  passenger 
traffic  of  the  world. 

The  Liverpool  and  Manchester  was  the  first 


The  Experiment,  the  First   Railway  Passenger 
Coach,  1825. 

railway  of  any  magnitude  that  opened  its  line 
for  the  carriage  of  passengers.  It  was  opened 
to  the  public  September  15,  1830,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  Duke  of  Wellington  and  other  celeb- 
rities, including  Mr.  Huskisson,  who  lost  his  life 
that  day  as  the  result  of  a  melancholy  accident. 
Previous  to  the  opening,  the  directors,  in  doubt 
about  what  form  of  traction  to  employ,  offered 
publicly  a  premium  of  £500  for  the  best  locomo- 
tive that  could,  under  certain  stipulations,  be 


38  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

constructed.     It  was  required  of  the  competing 
engines : — 

1.  That    they    should     consume    their    own 
smoke. 

2.  That   if  they  weighed  six  tons   each  they 
should  be  capable  of  drawing  a  train  of  twenty 
tons  weight  at  a  speed  on  the  level  of  ten  miles 
an  hour. 

3.  That  each  should  have  two  safety-valves — 
one  beyond  the  control  of  the  engine-driver. 

4.  That  the   height   of  the   engine,   including 
chimney,    should   not   exceed   fifteen   feet:   and 
lastly,  that  the  price  of  the  engine  of  the  suc- 
cessful   competitor    should    not     exceed    £550 
(which  was  the  sum  for  which  Stephenson  had 
built  the  Stockton  and  Darlington  engine). 

The  trial  resulted  in  Stephenson's  Rocket 
being  declared  the  winner,  the  other  compet- 
itors being  the  Novelty  by  Braithwaite  and 
Ericson  and  the  Sans  Parcil  by  T.  Hackworth, 
both  of  these,  however,  suffering  unlucky  break- 
downs. The  Rocket  twice  performed  the  dis- 
tance of  thirty  miles :  the  first  time  in  two  hours 
and  a  quarter,  the  second  in  two  hours  and 
seven  minutes.  Its  greatest  speed  was  at  the 
rate  of  thirty  miles  an  hour,  and  the  average 
about  fourteen. 

From  that  moment  a  new  era  in  rapid  transit 
began.  No  one  in  Europe  had  ever  traveled 
thirty  miles  an  hour  before  except  in  a  balloon. 
Stephenson  was  forthwith  appointed  to  build 
the  engines  of  the  railway,  and  from  that  period 
until  his  death  conducted  the  engineering  de- 
partment of  what  grew  to  be  the  London  and 
North- Western  Railway. 


THE   FIRST    RAILWAYS 


39 


On  September  15,  1830,  at  the  grand 
opening  of  the  line,  the  Northumbrian,  one  of 
the  most  powerful  of  the  engines,  took  the  lead, 


The  Rocket. 

followed  by  the  train  of  eight  locomotives  and 
twenty-eight  carriages,  which  as  it  rolled  proud- 
ly onward,  deeply  impressed  the  spectators. * 

*  A  local  newspaper,  describing  the  event  of  the  opening, 
when    Stephenson    himself    held    the    starting   lever    of    the 


40 


THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 


At  Parkhurst,  seventeen  miles  from  Manchester, 
a  halt  was  made  to  replenish  the  water  tanks, 
when  the  accident  occurred  by  which  Mr.  Hus- 
kisson  lost  his  life,  a  tragic  blot  on  the  day's 


The  Royal  George 

triumph.  On  the  following  day  the  line  was 
thrown  open  for  business.  The  Northumbrian 
drew  a  train  with  130  passengers  from  Liver- 
pool to  Manchester  in  one  hour  and  fifty  min- 
utes ;  and  before  the  close  of  the  week  six  trains 

Northumbrian,  observed,  "  The  engine  started  off  with  this 
immense  train  of  carriages,  and  such  was  its  velocity  that  in 
some  parts  the  speed  was  frequently  twelve  miles  an  hour." 


THE   FIRST   RAILWAYS  41 

daily  were  regularly  running.  The  surprise  and 
excitement  already  created  were  further  in- 
creased when  one  of  the  locomotives  by  itself 
covered  the  thirty-one  miles  in  less  than  an 
hour. 

Of  the  thirty  stage-coaches  which  had  plied 
between  the  two  towns,  all  save  a  single  one 
went  off  the  road  soon  afterward.  The  trans- 
port of  goods  and  merchandise  began  in 
December  and  furnished  new  occasion  for 
amazement  to  the  public,  for  a  loaded  train 
weighing  eighty  tons  was  drawn  by  the  Planet 
engine  at  from  twelve  to  sixteen  miles  an  hour. 
In  the  following  February,  1831,  the  Samson 
achieved  a  greater  feat,  conveying  1641/2  tons 
from  Liverpool  to  Manchester  in  two  hours  and 
a  half,  including  stoppages,  which  would  have 
required  seventy  horses  to  perform  in  twelve 
hours. 

The  success  of  the  line  rendered  obvious  the 
possibilities  of  the  system  to  the  whole  world. 
Branches  were  soon  made  to  Warrington,  to 
Bolton,  and  later  a  junction  was  effected  to  Bir- 
mingham. Yet  when  in  1830  the  London  and 
Birmingham  Company  had  sought  to  obtain 
their  charter,  a  well-known  engineer  openly 
deprecated  "the  ridiculous  expectations,  or 
rather  professions,  of  the  enthusiastic  specula- 
tor that  we  shall  see  engines  traveling  at  the  rate 
of  twelve,  sixteen,  eighteen  or  twenty  miles  an 
hour.  Nothing  could  do  more  harm  toward 
their  general  adoption  and  improvement  than 
the  promulgation  of  such  nonsense."  The  no- 
tion that  one  hundred  miles  an  hour  would  one 
day  be  achieved  would  probably  have  driven  this 


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THE   FIRST   RAILWAYS  43 

faint-hearted  champion  of  rapid  transit  into  par- 
oxysms of  derision. 

Early  in  1838  a  Scottish  periodical  announced 
that,  before  the  publication  of  its  next  number, 
in  consequence  of  the  despatch  of  the  mails  to 
Warrington  by  the  railway,  the  inhabitants  of 
Edinburgh  would  receive  their  letters  and  pa- 
pers a  whole  day  sooner,  that  is  to  say,  in  thirty- 
one  instead  of  fifty-five  hours.  A  return  by  post 
between  London  and  Edinburgh,  which  in  1818 
occupied  a  week,  would  now  be  done  in  three 
days  and  a  half.  The  prophecies  of  disaster  on 
account  of  the  railway  were  unfulfilled :  instead, 
everything  prospered  on  their  account,  even 
the  canal  proprietors  were  amazed  to  find  that 
railway  competition  improved  their  profits,  in- 
stead of  declining  them.  Even  horseflesh  in- 
creased in  value,  and  yet  it  had  been  declared 
that  if  railways  were  to  be  introduced  the 
stage-coach  horses  would  soon  become  worth- 
less. 

George  Stephenson  prophesied  that  it  would 
be  cheaper  for  a  working  man  to  ride  by  rail  than 
to  walk,  and  the  prediction  has  been  literally 
fulfilled  in  urban  districts.  As  early  as  1844, 
Parliament  enacted  that  passengers  should  be 
carried  over  all  lines  with  moderate  speed  and 
comfort  at  fares  not  exceeding  id.  a  mile.  To 
these  parliamentary  trains,  as  they  were  called, 
however,  the  lowest  class  of  passengers  were 
at  first  rigidly  restricted.  The  speed  may  be 
gauged  from  the  fact  that  the  train  from  Euston 
to  Liverpool,  201^  miles,  started  at  7.40  A.M., 
stopped  at  every  station,  and  arrived,  if  punctual, 
at  6.35  P.M.,  thus  occupying  nearly  eleven  hours 


44  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

on  a  journey  which  passengers,  paying  the  same 
low  fare,  can  now  perform  in  a  little  more  than 
four  hours. 


CHAPTER    III 
STEAM    NAVIGATION 

ONCE  the  art  of  navigation  had  been  mastered 
and  the  regular  trade  routes  established,  the 
matter  of  speed  was  allowed  to  take  care  of 
itself,  and  even  in  quite  modern  times  the  rate 
at  which  ships  traveled  was  an  arbitrary  one  and 
not  of  a  progressive  character.  Marco  Polo  in 
the  twelfth  century  doubtless  traveled  as  fast  as 
Drake  and  Raleigh ;  and  the  early  voyages  un- 
dertaken by  the  £ast  India  Company  to  India 
do  not  seem  to  have  been  materially  improved 
upon  by  their  service  in  the  era  of  Warren 
Hastings.* 

Rapid  transit  was  occasionally  made,  even  in 
the  old  days  ;  and  as  the  eighteenth  century  wore 
on  and  speed  came  to  be  more  and  more  con- 
sidered in  commercial  circles,  regular  efforts 
were  made  by  rival  interests  to  economize  time 
and  lessen  the  number  of  days  and  hours  en 
route. 

But  it  was  not  until  steam  was  applied  to 
navigation  that  speed  became  a  certainty,  and, 
therefore,  a  necessity  of  marine  traffic,  and  it 

*  One  voyage,  Hastings's  return  from  Calcutta  to  Plymouth 
in  1785,  was  thought  remarkable  for  speed.  It  was  done  in 
four  months  and  a  half. 


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46  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

grew  possible  to  establish  a  regular  ocean  time- 
table. Yet  to  demonstrate  that  even  with  sail- 
ing ships  our  ancestors  did  not  avail  themselves 
of  the  utmost  advantage,  there  was  the  memo- 
rable annual  ocean  race  of  15,000  miles  run  by 
the  China  tea-ships  within  living  memory.  The 
London  tea-brokers,  in  order  to  get  the  new 
crop  into  the  market  as  quickly  as  possible,  used 
to  offer  a  prize  of  £500  to  the  officers  and  crew 
of  the  first  tea-laden  ship  which  reached  the 
Thames.  In  1866  nine  such  sailing  ships  left 
Foochow  between  May  2gth  and  June  6th,  not 
very  long,  ranging  from  686  to  853  tons  regis- 
ter; but  all  fast,  five  being  Clyde  built,  three 
Aberdeen,  and  one  Liverpool.  Every  yard  of 
canvas  was  spread,  and  they  were  borne  swiftly 
and  steadily  by  the  trade-winds  across  the  ocean, 
sometimes  sighting  each  other  on  the  way.  rTt 
was  a  wonderful  race;  for  the  Teaking,  Ariel, 
and  Serica  all  entered  the  Thames  in  one  day 
(September  6th),  between  9.45  and  11.30  in 
the  evening,  the  other  six  ships  being  further 
from  the  winning-post."* 

It  is  not  necessary  here  to  go  into  the  vexed 
question  as  to  who  invented  the  steamboat,  an 
honor  claimed  for  several  rival  inventors  in  sev- 
eral different  countries — nor  into  the  early  his- 
tory of  that  contrivance.  We  know  that  as  early 
as  1783,  Fitch,  an  American,  propelled  a  steam- 
boat on  the  Delaware  River  by  paddles ;  but  the 
project  was  soon  abandoned.  Five  years  later 
Patrick  Miller,  of  Edinburgh,  fashioned  a  steam- 
boat which  went  at  the  rate  of  five  miles  an 

^The  course  was  about  10,000  miles ;  at  the  same  speed 
Calcutta  would  have  been  reached  in  eleven  weeks. 


STEAM   NAVIGATION  47 

hour ;  and  in  the  following  year,  in  conjunction 
with  Symington,  built  another  steamboat,  which 
attained  a  speed  of  seven  miles  an  hour,  drag- 
ging a  heavy  load.  In  1807,  Robert  Fulton, 
W'ho  had  been  personally  studying  the  various 
experiments  in  Europe,  built  a  steamer,  with 
engines  by  Boulton  &  Watt,  which  made  the 
voyage  up  the  Hudson  from  New  York  to  Al- 
bany, a  distance  of  150  miles,  at  the  rate  of  five 
miles  an  hour,  which  was  regarded  as  an  as- 
tounding feat.  The  first  to  make  a  sea-voyage 
by  steam  was  Stevens,  who  went  in  a  new 
steamer  from  New  York  to  the  Delaware ;  and 
having  introduced  many  important  improve- 
ments achieved  the  unheard-of  velocity  of  thir- 
teen miles  an  hour  on  that  river.  In  Europe  the 
pioneer  of  steamboats  for  passenger  traffic  was 
Bell's  Comet,  which  began  to  ply  regularly  be- 
tween Glasgow  and  Helensburgh  in  1812.  In 
the  following  year  steamers  appeared  on  the 
Clyde,  the  Severn,  and  the  Thames,  and  in  a 
few  years  steam  navigation  was  firmly  estab- 
lished, not  only  in  Great  Britain  but  in  Conti- 
nental countries. 

The  innovation  of  steam  soon  entirely  revolu- 
tionized river  and  channel  traffic.  Whereas, 
before  1813,  shipping  had  been  entirely  depend- 
ent on  the  wind,  it  was  now  possible  to  travel 
at  the  rate  of  nine  miles  an  hour  in  a  dead  calm 
and  seven  in  moderately  boisterous  weather,  as 
well  as  to  carry  goods  and  passengers  at  one- 
third  the  charge  exacted  by  land  transit.  In 
1821  they  first  carried  the  mails  between  Dub- 
lin and  Holyhead  and  between  Calais  and  Dover. 

When  it  \vas  first  proposed  to  cross  the  At- 


THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 


lantic  from  England  solely  by  steam-power,  the 
project  was  regarded  with  suspicion,  notwith- 
standing all  that  had  been  thus  early  accom- 
plished by  steam.  A  number  of  the  most  em- 
inent scientific  men  recorded  their  opposition 
to  it,  and  its  failure  was  freely  prophesied  even 
by  those  who  believed  in  the  future  of  land 
traction  bv  steam.  The  distance  to  be  traversed 


The  Comet. 

was  at  least  3,000  miles  of  open  ocean,  with  no 
intervening  land  where  a  vessel  might  put  in  for 
shelter  and  supplies.  It  is  true  that  in  1819  a 
vessel  named  the  Sa-cannah,  of  350  tons,  had 
made  the  journey  from  Xew  York  to  Liverpool 
in  twenty-six  days :  but  this  vessel  had  used  sails 
as  well  as  steam,  and  was,  besides,  a  week 
longer  on  the  voyage  than  the  sailing  "liners/5 
The  quantity  of  coal  necessary  to  propel  a 
steamer  with  engine  of  300  horse-power  across 
the  Atlantic  would,  it  was  estimated,  be  two 
tons  for  each  horse-power  of  the  engine — or, 
say,  700  tons  altogether,  including  provision  for 


STEAM   NAVIGATION  49 

accident  or  delay.  There  could  not  possibly  be 
room  for  so  much  fuel ;  if  the  tonnage  of  the  ves- 
sel were  made  more  than  four  times  its  horse- 
power, the  latter  would  be  inadequate  to  its  pro- 
pulsion at  the  ordinary  rate  of  steamships. 

The  first  ship  actually  to  steam  across  the  At- 
lantic was  a  Canadian — the  Royal  William, 
launched  at  Quebec,  1831,  her  engines  being 
sent  from  England.  In  1833  she  went  from 
Pictou,  N.  S.,  to  Gravesend,  arriving  September 
nth,  after  twenty-two  days'  passage.  But  this 
feat  attracted  little  attention,  although  it  no 
doubt  contributed  largely  to  the  result  so  soon 
to  be  attained. 

In  1836  a  series  of  "liners"  accomplished  the 
voyage  from  New  York  to  London  in  about 
twenty  days,  but  owing  to  the  Atlantic  currents 
this  time  was  usually  increased  to  thirty-six  days 
on  the  voyage  from  London  to  New  York. 
Mercantile  considerations  demanded  an  im- 
provement in  the  speed  of  communication  be- 
tween the  Old  World  and  the  New. 

If  the  regular  navigation  of  the  Atlantic  by 
steam  were  practicable,  it  was  essential  to  all 
interests  that  it  should  forthwith  be  adopted. 
Nothing  is  so  important  in  extensive  commer- 
cial transactions  as  early  and  regular  intelli- 
gence and  a  quick  and  speedy  transmission  of 
orders  and  goods.  From  what  steamers  had  al- 
ready done,  it  was  urged  that  is  was  reasonable 
to  expect  that  they  would  cross  the  Atlantic  in 
half  the  time  occupied  by  the  old  liners.  New 
York  would  therefore  be  brought  within  a  ten  or 
fourteen  days'  voyage  from  London,  Bristol,  or 
Liverpool.  Moreover  the  arrival  of  advices 
4 


50  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

could  be  circulated  with  certainty  to  a  day,  if 
not  to  an  hour — and  the  effect  of  this  certainty 
and  punctuality  would  have  a  wide-spread  influ- 
ence in  every  department  of  trade. 

The  Great  Western,  a  steamship  of  1,200  tons, 
which  was  to  make  the  experiment,  left  Bristol 
on  April  8,  1838,  for  New  York,  having  on 
board  660  tons  of  coal  and  seven  adventurous 
passengers. 

Three  days  before,  the  owners  of  the  S iritis,  a 
much  smaller  vessel,  built  to  ply  between  Lon- 
don and  Cork,  had  despatched  her  for  the  same 
destination.     Thus  there  ensued  a  struggle  be- 
tween the  two  steamers,  for  the  credit  of  being 
the  first  to  traverse  the   entire  breadth  of  the 
wild  Atlantic.     The  Sirius,  which  had  the  start 
by  some  clays,  or  400  miles,  made  little  way  com- 
paratively   the   first   week.      She   carried    more 
weight  in  proportion  than  the  Great  Western;  but 
as  her  coal  was  consumed,  she  made  much  bet- 
ter running.    For  instance,  during  the  first  week 
out,  her  daily  run  never  exceeded  136  miles;  on 
the  second  day  indeed  it  was  only  89.     On  the 
other  hand  the  Great  Western  accomplished  ten 
miles  an  hour  during  the  second  day,  and  her 
average  daily  run  for  the  whole  voyage  was  211 
miles.     At  this  rate  she  would  soon  overtake 
her  rival ;  but  as  the  Sirius  got  lighter  she  made 
greater  speed.     On  the  fourteenth  day  she  ran 
218  miles,  equaling  the  Great  Western,  and  on 
the    twenty-second    ran    only    three    miles    less 
than  her  larger  competitor. 

But  although  it  was  a  close  race,  the  Sirius, 
by  reason  of  her  start,  was  the  winner,  arriving 
in  New  York  on  the  morning  of  the  23d.  The 


STEAM  NAVIGATION 


Great  H'cstcni  steamed  in  the  same  afternoon 
amidst  the  greatest  excitement — flags  flying", 
guns  firing,  and  bells  ringing. 

Ten  to  fifteen  days  had  thus  been  knocked  off 


The  Great   Western. 

the  westward  Atlantic  journey.  Never  before 
had  a  voyage  to  the  New  World  been  done  in 
fifteen  days.  The  first,  by  Columbus,  had  taken 
five  weeks.* 

f  I.e.  from  the  Canaries  to  St.  Kitts.  The  probable  distance 
run  between  Gomera  and  the  newly  discovered  island  was 
3,105  miles.  The  longest  daily  run  was  200  miles. 


52  THE   STORY    OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

The  Sirius  proved  too  small  for  continued 
Atlantic  navigation,  and  was  soon  withdrawn 
to  follow  her  original  route  between  Cork  and 
London,  and  was  afterward  lost  off  the  Irish 
coast.  But  the  Great  Western  continued  to  ply 
regularly  and  successfully,  making  in  the  course 
of  the  next  six  years  thirty-five  voyages.  The 
average  distance  steamed  each  voyage  was 
nearly  3,500  miles;  the  average  time  occupied 
in  going  to  New  York  was  fifteen  clays,  twelve 
hours,  and  in  returning,  thirteen  days,  nine 
hours. 

In  1845  the  Great  Britain  reduced  the  time  of 
the  voyage  nearly  one  day  to  New  York,  but  in 
the  meantime  the  record  time  for  crossing  the 
Atlantic  had  been  achieved  by  a  Canadian,  in 
a  ship  the  same  size  as  the  Great  Western.  In 
1838,  closely  following  upon  the  success  of  the 
latter  ship  and  the  Sirius,  the  English  Govern- 
ment advertised  for  tenders  for  carrying  the 
ocean  mails.  Eventually  it  was  arranged  that 
Samuel  Cunard,  of  Halifax,  Nova  Scotia,  should 
receive  £65,000  per  annum  for  seven  years  for 
conveying  the  mails  twice  each  month  between 
Liverpool,  Halifax,  Quebec,  and  Boston.  In 
pursuance  of  this  contract,  the  steamer  Britannia 
left  Liverpool  July  4,  1840,  and  arrived  at  Hal- 
ifax in  twelve  days  ten  hours,  the  voyage  home 
being  performed  in  ten  days. 

This  was  the  foundation  of  the  famous  Cunard 
Line.  The  speed  and  regularity  with  which  the 
mails  were  carried  evoked  general  admiration. 
The  vessels  were  looked  for  and  usually  arrived 
on  the  appointed  day,  and  a  journey  which  was 
made  with  daring  and  just  apprehensions  a  few 


STEAM   NAVIGATION  53 

decades  back  was  soon  reduced  to  a  brief  epi- 
sode lasting  from  nine  to  eleven  days. 

In  1849  the  average  length  of  passage  from 
Liverpool  to  Halifax  was  1 1  days,  3  hours ;  from 
Halifax  to  Liverpool,  9  days,  21  hours;  Halifax 
to  Boston,  34  hours ;  Halifax  to  New  York,  55 
hours ;  New  York  to  Halifax,  62  hours ;  and 
Boston  to  Halifax,  41  hours.  These  returns 
show  a  marked  increase  in  speed  over  the  early 
voyage  of  steamers  across  the  Atlantic. 

But  still  although  the  transit  across  the  ocean 
had  been  rendered  more  rapid,  the  time  of  the 
voyage  between  Liverpool  and  New  York  had 
not  been  materially  reduced. 

The  steamers  of  the  Cunard  Line  were,  how- 
ever, soon  to  have  competitors.  Soon  after  they 
began  to  ply  direct  to  the  commercial  capital  of 
the  United  States  a  fleet  of  five  American  steam- 
ers, one  after  another,  appeared  to  contest  with 
them  the  "blue  ribbon  of  the  Atlantic."  The 
first  ship  of  the  Collins  Line,  called  the  Atlantic, 
sailed  from  New  York  on  April  27,  1850. 
As  the  time  of  her  expected  arrival  at  Liverpool 
drew  near,  the  public  interest  became  intense, 
and  it  was  realized  that  a  rivalry  had  begun 
that  wrould  make  of  the  ocean  a  gigantic  race- 
course for  the  ships  of  the  two  nations.  But 
"the  prizes  of  the  turf  are  paltry  compared  with 
that  for  which  these  steamers  contended — the 
proud  distinction  of  establishing  the  most 
speedy  and  safe  communication  between  two 
great  continents  and  two  mighty  nations  !" 

At  length  when  the  steamers  of  the  Cunard 
Line  began  to  ply  direct  to  New  York  the  rate 
of  speed  began  to  increase.  With  the  splendid 


54  THE   STORY    OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

new  ships  which  were  built  every  appliance 
which  could  insure  speed  was  tried.  In  1862 
with  the  Scotia,  then  the  fastest  and  largest  of 
the  Atlantic  fleet,  the  run  from  New  York  to 
Liverpool  was  made  within  nine  days. 

This  feat  was  regarded  as  the  acme  of  speed 
in  ocean  traveling.  "Faster  than  this,"  wrote 
one  great  authority,  "it  would  be  neither  safe 
nor  desirable  to  go — if,  indeed,  such  velocity 
ever  became  possible." 

The  superiority,  however,  was  not  distinctly 
shown  by  either  side.  The  fastest  western  pas- 
sage in  1850  was  made  by  the  Pacific  in  Sep- 
tember, when  only  ten  days,  five  hours  were 
consumed  between  Liverpool  and  New  York ; 
while  the  swiftest  eastern  voyage  was  that  of 
the  Asia  in  ten  and  a  half  days. 

In  the  meantime,  the  screw  principle  had  been 
developed.  The  Propeller,  which  entered  the 
Mersey  in  1840,  being  the  first  large  steamer  to 
dispense  entirely  with  side  paddles,  and  not  long 
afterward  all  the  vessels  of  the  Inman  Line  were 
equipped  with  screws.  After  the  failure  of  the 
Collins  Line,  this  company  obtained  the  mail 
contract  between  Liverpool  and  New  York. 

On  August  16,  1825,  the  steamer  Enterprise 
left  Falmouth  for  Calcutta.  She  arrived  at  the 
Cape  on  October  I3th,  and  at  Calcutta  Decem- 
ber 9th,  having  been  nearly  four  months  on  the 
voyage,  which  was  about  the  usual  time  of  a 
sailing  vessel.  This  was  found  unsatisfactory: 
but  although  shorter  routes  to  India  could  be 
found,  there  was  none  which  was  to  be  entirely 
traversed  by  a  single  vessel.  The  expedient  was 
therefore  resolved  upon  to  break  the  voyage  in 


STEAM   NAVIGATION  55 

half — and  have  it  performed  by  two  sets  of 
steamers.  At  the  eastern  extremity  of  the  Med- 
iterranean a  steamship  would  be  within  a  few 
miles  of  a  sea  which  formed  an  unbroken  water 
route  to  the  far  East.  The  obstacle  was  the 
Isthmus  of  Suez.  Several  experiments  were 
undertaken  by  the  British  Government,  and  in 
1837  the  route  via  Alexandria,  Cairo,  and  Suez, 
comprising  a  land  transit  of  eighty-four  miles 
was  adopted.  The  British  Government  under- 
took the  transportation  between  England  and 
Egypt,  and  the  East  India  Company  between 
Egypt  and  India.  The  mails  were  sent  from 
Falmouth  to  Gibraltar  in  vessels  engaged  in  the 
postal  service  with  Portugal  and  Spain ;  at  Gib- 
raltar they  were  transferred  to  Admiralty  steam- 
ers which  conveyed  them  to  Malta  and  Alexan- 
dria; they  were  then  carried  up  the  Nile  to 
Cairo,  and  from  thence  across  the  desert  to 
Suez,  where  a  steamer  belonging  to  the  East 
India  Company  was  in  wraiting  to  convey  them 
to  Bombay. 

The  time  occupied  by  the  old  all-sea  route  was 
one  hundred  days ;  communication  with  India 
via  Suez  was  now  reduced  to  between  fifty  and 
sixty  days. 

Even  yet  the  community  was  not  satisfied. 
In  order  to  reduce  this  time  still  further,  a  treaty 
was  made  in  1839  with  the  French  Government 
to  convey  a  portion  of  the  mails  through  France 
to  Marseilles,  whence  they  were  forwarded  to 
Malta,  where  the  steamer  from  Gibraltar  was 
met.  By  this  expedient  two  more  days  were 
saved. 

Prior  to    1837,  the   mails  between  Falmouth 


56  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

and  Gibraltar  took  from  eighteen  to  twenty-one 
days  in  transit,  the  vessels  calling-  at  Vigo, 
Oporto,  Lisbon,  and  Cadiz.  In  that  year  the 
British  Government  entered  into  a  contract  with 
the  "Peninsula  Steam  Company,"  and  soon  their 
steamers  were  conveying  the  mails  in  five  days. 
Desiring  still  further  to  accelerate  the  mail  ser- 
vice to  India,  a  further  arrangement  was  made 
in  1840  with  this  company  to  run  from  England 
to  Alexandria,  calling  only  at  Gibraltar  and 
Malta,  and  by  this  means  communication  to 
Suez  was  made  almost  as  rapid  as  through 
France. 

When,  in  the  course  of  two  or  three  years,  the 
transit  to  Suez  was  rendered  swift  and  regular, 
it  was  natural  that  communication  on  the  other 
side  of  the  isthmus  should  be  extended  and  ac- 
celerated. A  contract  was  therefore  made  with 
the  Company- -known  thereafter  as  the  "Pe- 
ninsular and  Oriental"  -by  which  Calcutta, 
Madras,  Ceylon,  and  China  were  embraced  with- 
in the  scope  of  the  service.  They  began  in  1845 
with  three  steamers,  the  Bcntinck,  Hindustan,  and 
Precursor,  of  about  2,000  tons  and  500  horse- 
power. Ocean  steaming  was  so  far  developed 
in  1850  that  mails  were  delivered  at  Hong-Kong 
containing  letters  which  only  fifty-five  days  be- 
fore had  been  written  in  New  York.  This  per- 
formance, which  so  astounded  our  sires,  and  was 
even  a  matter  of  wonderment  in  the  early  seven- 
ties, is  rendered  more  significant  wrhen  we  re- 
member that  these  letters  after  crossing  the  At- 
lantic had  passed  through  Liverpool,  London, 
Paris,  Marseilles,  Malta,  Alexandria,  and  Cairo 
to  Suez,  where  they  were  placed  on  board  the 


STEAM   NAVIGATION  57 

P.  and  O.  steamer,  which  bore  them  down  the 
Red  Sea  and  across  the  Indian  Ocean  to  Ceylon, 
where  they  were  transferred  to  another  steamer 
and  by  her  conveyed,  after  calling"  at  Penang 
and  Singapore,  to  their  ultimate  destination. 
The  whole  journey  was  equal  in  length  to  half 
the  circumference  of  the  globe.* 

In  1851  the  steamers  for  Alexandria  sailed 
from  Southampton  on  the  2Oth  of  each  month, 
arrived  at  Gibraltar  on  the  26th,  at  Malta  on  the 
ist  of  the  following  month,  and  at  Alexandria 
on  the  Qth.  A  small  steamer  conveyed  passen- 
gers and  mails  up  the  Nile  and  in  vans  across  the 
desert  (the  railway  not  being  built  at  that  time). 
On  the  loth  the  steamer  left  Suez,  steaming 
down  the  Red  Sea  to  Aden.  Calcutta  was 
reached  in  about  twenty-eight  days  from  Suez — 
or  seven  weeks  from  Southampton. 

But  although  this  velocity  caused  the  utmost 
admiration  throughout  Europe,  the  next  few 
years  were  to  bring  about  great  further  changes 
and  improvement.  Many  important  circum- 
stances were  to  influence  and  expand  the  East- 
ern traffic,  principal  among  which  was  the  as- 
sumption by  the  Imperial  Government  of  the 
powers  of  the  East  India  Company ;  the  growth 
of  a  gigantic  trade  with  the  free  ports  of  China 
and  Japan ;  the  great  increase  of  import  and  ex- 
port trade  consequent  on  the  Australian  gold 
discoveries ;  the  reduction  of  letter  postage  and 
the  establishment  of  book-post ;  healthy  steam- 
ship competition  ;  and  the  construction  of  a  rail- 
way across  the  isthmus  from  Alexandria  to  Suez. 

*  Even  now  the  journey  to  Hong-Kong  consumes  forty-five 
days  by  the  all-sea  route. 


58  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

In  1866  the  P.  and  O.  Company  were  bound 
by  contract  to  convey  the  mails  between  South- 
ampton and  Alexandria  in  310  hours  ;  Marseilles 
and  Alexandria,  155  hours;  Suez  to  Calcutta, 
499  hours;  Bombay  to  Hong-Kong,  413  hours; 
Hong-Kong  to  Shanghai,  84  hours;  and  Suez 
and  Bombay,  312  hours.  A  few  hours'  grace 
was  allowed  in  each  case,  but  anything  beyond 
twenty-four  hours  involved  a  forfeit  of  £50  a 
day;  whereas,  to  anticipate  the  delivery  of  the 
mails  entitled  them  to  a  premium  of  £25  a 
day. 

Thus  we  see  that  the  voyage  by  sea  from 
Southampton  to  Alexandria  had  been  reduced 
from  nineteen  days  in  1850  to  less  than  thirteen 
days  in  1866;  while  from  Suez  to  Calcutta  could 
now  be  done  in  just  under  three  weeks.  By  trav- 
eling by  rail,  however,  to  Marseilles  (thirty-two 
hours),  Alexandria  could  be  reached  in  six  days, 
eleven  hours  from  Marseilles. 

Then  in  1871  came  the  Mont  Cenis  tunnel, 
which  placed  unbroken  communication  by  rail  at 
the  disposal  of  France  and  Italy.  This  resulted 
in  the  despatch  of  mails  overland  to  Brindisi, 
and  thence  conveyed  by  steamers  to  Alexandria. 

The  great  advantage  of  the  Suez  Canal  is  the 
enormous  decrease  in  the  distance  to  be  traveled 
between  Europe  and  India,  and  consequent  enor- 
mous saving  of  time.  It  is  about  10,719  miles 
from  London  or  Hamburg,  by  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope,  to  Bombay.  By  the  Suez  Canal  this  was 
reduced  to  6,274.  From  Marseilles  to  Bombay 
via  the  Cape,  the  distance  is  10,560  miles;  by  the 
Suez  it  is  only  4,620. 

Yet  the  passage  through  the  Suez  Canal  itself 


STEAM    NAVIGATION  59 

has  been  materially  cut  down.  The  average  tran- 
sit in  1886  was  fifty-four  hours,  and  is  now  only 
eighteen  hours  at  night,  owing  to  the  aid  of  elec- 
tric light  displayed  from  the  decks  of  the  ships. 
The  average  passage  of  steamers  passing  by  day 
is  about  twenty-eight  hours.  No  ship  is  allowed 
to  exceed  five  or  six  knots  an  hour;  so  that  if  the 
canal  were  wider  the  ninety  miles  could  be  done 
in  less  than  half  the  time. 

The  value  of  the  British  possessions  in  the 
West  Indies  and  the  importance  of  the  South 
American  trade  foreshadowed  the  establishment 
of  speedy  communication  in  that  quarter.  Prior 
to  1840  the  best  sailing  vessels  took  four  weeks 
to  Barbados  and  Demerara,  although  the  dis- 
tance was  only  about  4,000  miles  in  a  direct  line. 
By  the  establishment  of  the  Royal  Mail  Steam- 
Packet  Company  in  1840,  a  fleet  of  fourteen 
steamers  was  built  to  sail  twice  every  month  to 
the  West  Indies,  St.  Thomas  being  the  chief 
rendezvous.  The  run  from  Southampton  to  St. 
Thomas  was  done  regularly  in  eighteen  days. 
Ten  years  later  this  was  cut  down  to  fifteen  days. 

In  1865  the  Royal  Mail  steamer  left  South- 
ampton on  the  9th  of  each  month,  got  to  Lisbon 
on  the  I4th,  St.  Vincent  (Cape  Verd)  on  the  22d, 
crossed  the  Atlantic,  reached  Pernambuco  on  the 
30th;  thence  to  Bahia  on  the  2cl  of  the  following 
month,  to  Rio  de  Janeiro  on  the  5th — twenty-six 
days  after  leaving  England.  At  Rio  a  branch 
steamer  was  ready  to  convey  the  mails  further 
south,  arriving  at  Montevideo  on  the  I4th,  to 
Buenos  Ayres  on  the  I5th.  This  journey  to  Rio 
has  since  been  cut  down  to  twenty-one  days  and 
Montevideo  can  be  reached  in  twenty-five  days 


60  THE    STORY   OF   RAPID    TRANSIT 

from  London.  With  still  faster  steamers  it  could 
be  done  in  a  fortnight. 

In  1866  a  line  of  steamers  was  established  to 
do  the  distance  between  California  and  the  Sand- 
wich Islands  in  about  eight  days.  It  has  since 
been  done  in  six  days. 

The  subsequent  general  adoption  of  the  sur- 
face-condenser and  the  circular  multi-tubular 
boiler  enabled  higher  pressures  of  steam  to  be 
safely  carried  and  economically  employed.  By 
1877,  we  may  sav>  steamers  had  been  established 
on  all  the  longer  routes  and  worked  at  high  rates 
of  speed.  In  that  year  the  Orient  Steam  Naviga- 
tion Company  began  a  series  of  fortnightly  sail- 
ings to  Australia,  one  of  their  steamers,  the 
Orient,  astonishing  the  world  by  making  the  pas- 
sage from  Plymouth  to  Adelaide,  via  Suez  Canal, 
in  thirty-five  days,  sixteen  hours,  and  the  same 
voyage  via  the  Cape,  in  thirty-four  days,  one 
hour,  steaming  time.  It  was  when  the  Australian 
liner  Aberdeen  was  built  in  1881  that  the  merits 
of  the  triple-expansion  type  of  engine,  now  so 
universal,  were  first  conclusively  shown.  The 
engines  of  this  vessel  worked  with  a  boiler  pres- 
sure of  125  Ibs.  per  square  inch,  and  expansion 
took  place  in  three  cylinders.  Her  first  voyage 
from  Plymouth  to  Melbourne  occupied  forty-two 
days.  In  1883  a  New  Zealand  line  was  instituted, 
and  voyages  from  England  thence  cut  down  from 
sixty-five  to  thirty-seven  or  forty  days. 

But  it  was  and  is  on  the  Atlantic  that  the  great- 
est ocean  speed  triumphs  have  been  won.  In 
1874  the  White  Star  liners  Britannic  and  Ger- 
manic were  built  at  Belfast,  and  from  that  year 
a  hotly  waged  contest  for  superiority  in  speed, 


STEAM    NAVIGATION  6 1 

size,  and  equipment  has  lasted  to  the  present  day. 
Each  increase  in  speed  nowadays  represents  in- 
numerable modifications — some  minor,  some 
radical — which  engineering  and  shipbuilding  sci- 
ence suggests.  For  a  time  the  White  Star  liners 
maintained  first  place  for  speed,  until  they  were 
ousted  by  the  Inman  liner,  City  of  Berlin,  which 
beat  the  Britannic' s  record  of  eight  and  a  quarter 
days  across  the  Atlantic.  Liner  after  liner  ap- 
peared, each  faster  than  its  predecessor,  until  in 
1886  the  average  time  between  Sandy  Hook  and 
Queenstown  was  about  six  days,  fifteen  hours,  as 
compared  with  eleven  days,  nineteen  hours  in 
1856.  Since  then  the  record  has  been  lowered  re- 
peatedly. The  Campania  achieved  the  journey  in 
five  days,  twelve  hours,  fifteen  minutes,  which 
was  supposed  to  be  unsurpassable  until  it  was 
broken  first  by  one  ocean  greyhound  and  then 
another,  the  Lncania  in  1894  doing  the  voyage  in 
five  days,  eight  hours  from  Queenstown  to  New 
York.  ' 

The  Lucanias  record  of  562  knots  in  a  single 
day  was  soon  to  be  beaten  by  the  great  North 
German  Lloyd  steamers  sailing  from  Southamp- 
ton to  New  York,  one  of  which,  the  Fiirst  Bis- 
marck, had  already  done  this  longer  journey  in 
less  than  six  and  a  half  days. 

In  July,  1901,  the  Deutschland  lowered'  all 
records  by  crossing  the  Atlantic  in  five  days, 
eleven  hours,  five  minutes,  her  average  speed 
being  23.51  knots,  whilst  the  best  day's  run  was 
557  miles.  The  distance  traversed  between 
Sandy  Hook  and  the  Eddystone  on  that  occasion 
was  3,082  miles.  In  June,  1902,  the  Krvnprinz 
Wilhchn  maintained  a  trifle  higher  average  speed 


62  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

than  the  Deutschland's  record.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  length  of  the  voyage  between  New 
York  and  Plymouth  was  not  reduced,  as  the 
Kronprins  was  five  clays,  eleven  hours,  thirty-two 
minutes  running  between  Sandy  Hook  and  the 
Eddystone,  twenty-seven  minutes  longer  than  the 
Deutschland,but  in  those  few  minutes  she  steamed 
an  additional  thirteen  miles,  the  log  of  the  Kron- 
prinz  showing  that  the  total  distance  traveled  was 
3,095  miles.  Thus,  although  the  Krvnprins  es- 
tablished a  new  record  for  average  speed,  the 
Deutschland's  557  miles  remained  the  best  day's 
run  on  the  homeward  voyage.  The  Kronprinz's 
average  speed  throughout  her  trip  was  23.53 
knots. 

In  1901  the  new  twin-screw  steamer  Arundcl 
made  a  record  channel  passage  from  New  Haven 
to  Dieppe  in  two  hours,  fifty-eight  minutes,  or  at 
an  average  speed  of  twenty-two  knots.  The  ab- 
sence of  all  vibration  was  secured  to  passengers 
by  a  patent  balancing  arrangement  of  the  ma- 
chinery. 

What  part  electric  traction  will  play  in  the 
future  of  navigation  cannot  easily  be  predicted. 
But  even  with  steam,  it  is  almost  certain  that  the 
old  piston  and  cylinder  type  of  engine  will  be 
superseded.  Another  and  fundamentally  differ- 
ent type — the  turbine — in  which  the  impulse  of 
the  steam  spins  a  wheel  instead  of  pushing  a  pis- 
ton— is  making  great  headway.  The  antiquity  of 
the  idea  is  considerable — it  is  even  ascribed  to 
Hero  of  Alexandria,  who  describes  an  elementary 
form  of  such  an  engine,  and  this  rotary  principle 
was  certainly  experimented  with  and  abandoned 
by  the  seventeenth  century  experimenters.  The 


a 

3 


64  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

reason  was  that  it  was  not  adapted  to  pumping, 
this  being  the  end  then,  and  until  toward  the 
close  of  the  eighteenth  century,  in  view.  In  the 
meantime  the  piston-engine  became  developed 
and  the  turbine  principle  rested  dormant  until 
only  some  twenty  years  ago  the  requirements  of 
the  dynamo-electric  machine  opened  up  fresh  in- 
ducements for  development.  By  1894  so  many 
details  had  been  worked  out,  that  capital  was  in- 
duced to  venture  upon  the  construction  of  an  ex- 
perimental ship.  This  vessel,  the  Tnrbinia,  after 
repeated  trials  and  modifications,  achieved  the 
unprecedented  speed  of  34^  knots  an  hour. 
This  was  the  high-water  mark  of  marine  travel- 
ing— but  it  was  to  be  surpassed.  The  Viper,  a 
larger  but  similar  vessel,  constructed  for  the 
British  Navy,  as  a  torpedo  destroyer,  reached  a 
velocity  of  forty-one  miles  an  hour.  The  builder 
has  stated  his  confidence  that  fifty  and  even  sixty 
miles  an  hour  will  yet  be  achieved  by  such  craft 
on  the  high  seas. 


CHAPTER  IV 
DEVELOPMENT   OF   THE   RAILWAY 

IT  was  to  be  expected  that  foreign  countries 
would  eagerly  avail  themselves  of  the  extraordi- 
nary advantages  which  railways  had  been  shown 
to  confer  upon  commerce  and  society  in  Great 
Britain. 

But  the  neighboring  kingdom  of  France  was 
very  backward.  English  visitors  to  that  country 
in  1845  were  wont  to  complain  of  the  slow  pace 


DEVELOPMENT   OF   THE   RAILWAY          65 


of  the  diligence,  not  remembering  that  it  was 
quite  equal  to  that  which  at  the  beginning  of  the 
century  was  ordinarily  accomplished  in  England. 

Posting  in  Germany  was  soon,  after  the  down- 
fall of  Napoleon,  placed  on  a  much  improved 
footing  in  the  matter  of  speed:  but  even  in  1840 
from  fourteen  to  eighteen  German  miles  was 
reckoned  as  the  ordinary  extent  of  a  day's 
journey. 

"France,"  observes  a  writer  in  1844,  "has  al- 
lowed herself  to  be  outstripped  by  her  neighbors, 
not  only  by  England,  but  also  by  Belgium,  Prussia, 
and  Austria,  in  these  means  of  extending  national 
resources  and  civilization,  which  the  country 
more  especially  stands  in  need  of.  She  has,  how- 
ever, for  the  present  laid  out  her  money  in  fortifi- 
cations, and  has  little  to  spare  for  lines  of  com- 
munication. This,  however,  is  not  the  sole  rea- 
son; it  lies  in  the  want  of  confidence  between 
man  and  man,  and  in  the  absence  of  the  spirit  of 
association,  by  means  of  which  all  great  public 
works  are  executed  in  England  by  private  enter- 
prise, but  which  does  not  exist  in  France."  Yet 
even  at  this  time  the  use  of  steam  in  navigation 
was  very  general  in  France.  All  the  great  rivers 
being  traversed  by  steamers.  'In  almost  all 
cases,"  we  read,  "the  engineers  employed  on 
these  vessels  are  Englishmen." 

Railway  progress  in  France  was  certainly  slow : 
and  for  some  years  lagged  behind  England,  Bel- 
gium, and  Germany.  Although  the  introduction 
of  the  first  tram-road  dates  from  1783,  it  was  not 
until  1835  that  the  first  modern  railway  was  be- 
gun bv  the  authorization  of  the  line  from  Paris 

^j  j  ' 

to    St.    Germain,    its    completion    following   two 
5 


66  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

years  later.  In  1838  the  Orleans  line  was  under- 
taken and  the  railway  from  Paris  to  Rouen  was 
opened  in  May,  1843,  and  soon  afterward  extended 
to  Havre.  Comprehensive  measures  at  last  fol- 
lowed on  the  part  of  the  French  Government, 
which  proposed  to  form  railways  from  the  capital 
to  all  the  frontiers  of  France,  taking  the  principal 
towns  and  cities  en  route.  By  1865  the  plan  was 
practically  carried  out,  and  between  8,000  and 
9,000  miles  were  open  for  traffic. 

In  Belgium,  preparations  for  railways  began 
in  1834,  and  thirty  years  later  the  network  was 
nearly  as  close  and  intricate  as  in  Great  Britain. 
Germany  early  permitted  railways  to  cross  her 
frontiers,  and  soon  numerous  lines  were  stretch- 
ing far  and  wide  throughout  the  Empire.  Iron 
highways  also  began  to  be  projected  and  built  in 
Italy  and  Russia,  Holland,  Sweden,  and  the  other 
European  states.  In  Spain  in  1851  there  were 
only  two  railways,  one  of  eighteen  miles  from 
Barcelona  to  Mataro;  another  forty-five  miles, 
from  Madrid  to  Aranjuez.  It  took  some  time  to 
conquer  the  national  aversion  to  rapid  transit,  and 
journeys  were  still  made  throughout  the  Penin- 
sula at  the  speed  with  which  the  immortal  Gil 
Bias  traveled  from  Madrid  to  Alcantara. 

The  first  line  in  Spain  was  inaugurated  with 
the  ceremony  of  ''blessing  the  engine"  by  the 
Cardinal  Archbishop  of  Toledo,  in  presence  of 
the  Court,  Cortes,  distinguished  nobles,  troops 
and  halberdiers,  and  three  miles  of  spectators. 
The  following  day  the  peasants  on  the  road,  see- 
ing the  trains  traveling  at  the  unheard-of  velocity 
of  fifteen  miles  an  hour,  involuntarily  fell  on  their 
knees  and  crossed  themselves  until  the  monster 


Great  "Western  Railway. 

LONDON  TO  MAIDENHEAD.  *  ff  1*1} 

On  and  after  the  1st  of  May,  the  SOUTH  ALL  STATION  wiU  be  opened 

/•«/•  J\t*st!H*/t;rsiaml  Parctft, 
A*  t-Atr*  Train  i«  Hlougli  -.11  i--i>    t'^dn,  ,,.,-...,,  Maafaj  Hornlnif*,  .t  lialf-p.t^l  9  o'rfo<rk,  «..!li»;  .1  r*ll»j, 

{'hanjffor  \-whcet  Carriage,  \'2s.     TVcMrAe*/ ditto*  8f*     /'i/r  1  Hunt,  |0».     /'air  o/"  //ursct,  I&«. 

l*v»1  llornew  are  Irpi  in  r<  nine's*  butti  .M  Pa-Min^li/u  ui<I  Maidenlu-*.!,  ainl  upon  milieu  t,i  notice  W-m^  t;  M  Q  »t 
ISJJin^lon,  or  at  lite  Hull  au<l  M.-mh  Offiiv,  -"?i.  Mariui'i-lc  UuuJ.  HvjJJ  U:  »viil  lv  luiii^  Carru^>,  fn-ni  »uj  |«n(ff  LvtMM 
It*  I  lie  »(ation(  at  a  tnottcrjt^  clurgc. 

TRAINS. 

From  Maidenhead     To  Paddington. 
•  o'dudt  dwcaiog^  nDjap  ai    .          .  fri&n.-s 

(  4Ht  -it  tVcilnn4ay  tternlKf  at  s....lK,lly 

do.  •  Bloucb  and  \V«1  Un>il»n 

Muu,-l.  u.J  w  01  Un;Ma 

--!..  .-h  aod  Scull,.!: 
dlough  -iuj  \S(.t  Drajrton 
Mou^h  aiij  >outtkAll 

Mouj;h  and  Kuin.^1 
tloujh  anj  «\,l  llrarl. 
MouBh  aud  '   ' 


From  Paddington    To  Maidenhead. 

Soulliall  unil  sliiii^h 


*l  o'clock  ni'Tn  railing  .11 

•                 do.  . 

10                     fl».  • 

13                        do.  ' 


•  Wr-l  l>rj>l..n  in.l  .-|...i_li 
'                  \Vr.t   1  >|  .<•   m  .ind  flou;:ll 

-  \\  l.t   L>ru\!   u.  .,.1,1   >:.••,.;  t 

4  Id...  ...  M,,,.:;!, 

A  da.  -  -          llanMcll  anil  M..M    h 

0  o'clock  •  •  '  mrc:  Kiling,  \\'c»l  !  'i  i'  •  •    ami  .slouch 

1  d...  -  -        Sonl!niU  uJ  Sbiiish 


* 


<K 

d  '. 

-  U'i. 

2  o'clock  afliTiiooo 

d". 

do. 

O  o'clock.  -coin- 
J  do. 


Tkr  «It  o>loi  L  up  Trala  will  rail  at  .Sonlhull  on  \\  rdnf*A*j  moraloCB,  for  Iherooiralrocv 
orprm«u»»ttrndiux  Ibr  uiurbrt  uu  thai  da). 

SHOUT  TRAINS. 


From  Paddington  To  West  Drayton. 


*    (vlkl  tt     Uv.        L"  i'i.'.     *  V.     Moalhall,  )       [  before   7  o'Clotk  Evening     )  (,       K  HlLaf . 


From  West  Drayton  ToPaddlngton. 

'"••" 

-«u 

»|U»j. 


(ty*      77icrc  ar*  He  Itfutitt  tttltt  rluit  rilfrittyn  in  llir  tttort  Train!. 
P-j*\cnRrr«  and  Parcel,  for  Slouch  and  Maiilcnhcai]  wifl  l>c  conrrjcd  from  all  the  nations  (>y   mrnni  of  ihf  then 
Trjin>.  Muling  lo  he  taken  on  lit  the  .urr.-ttlin-  lon^  1  rain,  as  auo\i:  ;  and  lu  Ukc  manner  UiCT   •  lU  b«  Couvetrd 
Iroia  Maidenhead  ami  Hoiiyli.  lo  vi-er\  station  on  tie  Line. 

On  si,\l>  \  VS. 


From  Paddington    To  Maidenhead. 

ft  avkx-h  Muri.nllincM  •        •      lilii.B  anrt  >lm.;H 

|r.>iH  Ho. 

O          <W>. 


7 


«i.>. 

At 

t:. 


;»e.tl...il..,,.ud>l..,,;h 
Swutli  J>  and  M..ii(;li 


From  Maidenhead    To  Paddington. 


O 


M.K-r..l  SlnraTlerh  Morolav 

To  West  Drayton. 

cVlmt;  Rl  J  'ii'ft  fjn^ffttiny  lo  Slotiyti 

I  past  3       do.      Kvcninp,  /..'/<»./.  llannrll  Of  H..t,rlwlt 


?e.eo...s       d». 
*<.       °       «.. 

SHOUT  TRAINS, 

TO  SLOUGH. 

railing  al  baling,  llanwtl 


Slou^b  .ud  Um  l>r.yl.« 


l  ,  Saalhitllj  and  Dra  1  1*». 


From  West  Drayton. 

"'  hcfore  8  o'clock  Morning,  {  cjUi|)          \    .V»l<<(/. 
;  before  ^      do.     ['••  irnur.  ^  ^ifftlff  fait 


FARES. 


Paddinglon. 

To  Eating 

Hanvell  . . . 

Southoll 

West  Drayton 
S!ouyti 


'    1,—          1        0;., 


I     1st     I 

Maidenhead.  — —\ : 

J  cofr-h.  I  t*v»*    i  OT»»«. 


201     6 


2  G      1 

3  C     2 


4     6     3    0 


09 


To  Slough 


. 
Maiden/ieaJ  .      58     4     0  !  3     6 


2    0  I  1     ti 


West  Droytfftt  I  3    0(2     6  i  2    0 

I  i 


'       0  j  3  0  i  2  6 

63  6  j  3  0 

Kaliny 1.5    04  03  6 

PaJdimjlon.    |  5     6  I  4  0  |  3  6 


llanwcil   ...   i  4 


Oti 

Jn-i,  Kl 


Facsimile  Time-table,   1839. 


68  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

was  out  of  sight.  This  speed  was  not,  however, 
regularly  maintained;  twelve  miles  an  hour  was 
for  a  long  time  the  standard  schedule  time  on  the 
Spanish  railways. 

But  let  us  return  to  England  just  before  the 
general  employment  of  railways. 

In  1837  it  was  necessary  in  order  to  proceed 
to  Dover  by  the  most  expeditious  public  convey- 
ance to  book  seats  in  the  Foreign  Mail,  which 
left  the  General  Post  Office  in  St.  Martin's  le 
Grand  every  Tuesday  and  Friday  night  and  ar- 
rived in  Dover  in  time  for  the  packets  at  8. 15  the 
following  morning — thus  beating  by  half  an  hour 
any  other  coach  on  the  road. 

For  day  travel,  the  Express  started  from  the 
"Golden  Cross,"  Charing  Cross,  at  10  A.M.  each 
morning,  doing  the  journey  in  nine  hours,  as  did 
the  Union  Coach.  The  others  took  longer. 
The  famous  Tally-ho  coach  between  London 
and  Canterbury  left  town  every  afternoon  and 
accomplished  the  fifty-nine  miles  in  five  hours 
and  a  half. 

Laws  were  actually  passed  in  England,  on  the 
first  introduction  of  steam  on  railways,  limiting 
the  pressure  in  the  engine-boilers  to  thirty 
pounds  per  square  inch.  The  first  railroad  char- 
ter contained  a  clause  limiting  the  speed  of  trains 
to  twelve  miles  an  hour,  and  when  thirty  miles 
an  hour  \vas  suggested,  it  was  ridiculed  as  an  idea 
simply  insane.  "Such  a  fearful  velocity  would, 
without  doubt,  have  the  most  disastrous  effects 
upon  the  circulation  of  the  blood  and  the  vital 


organs." 


We  have  seen  what  was  the  time  consumed 
between  London  and  Paris :  let  us  now  glance  at 


u 

c 


70  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

the  conditions  which  obtained  in    1843  by   the 
chief  routes: 

By  Dover  and  Calais. 

London  to  Dover  (by  railway)     . 
Dover  to  Calais  (by  steamer) 
Calais  to  Paris  (by  diligence) 

Total      .     291       29^ 

By  another  route,  via  Brighton  and  Dieppe, 
the  journey  to  the  French  capital  was  made  as 
follows : — 

Miles.     Hours. 

London  to  Brighton      .         .         .       50^     2 
Brighton  to  Shoreham  .         .         5         0^4 

Shoreham  to  Havre      .         .         .       94         9 
Havre  to  Paris      .         .         .         .132       13 

Total      .     281^ 

When  in  1839  the  Midland  Counties  Railway 
was  opened  the  only  modes  of  conveyance  were 
the  canal,  the  fly-wagon,  and  the  coach.  Only 
three  of  the  latter  ran  daily  each  way  between 
Leicester  and  Nottingham.  A  wool-stapler  stated 
at  the  time  that  he  frequently  had  from  twenty  to 
five  hundred  bags  of  wool  lying  at  Bristol  which 
could  not  be  brought  forward  by  land,  and  he 
had,  therefore,  to  divide  the  bulk  and  send  it  by 
different  routes;  the  part  despatched  by  the  road 
taking  from  a  week  to  ten  days  in  transit,  and  that 

*  In  1842  it  is  given  in  "  Murray's  Guide  "  as  five  hours 


DEVELOPMENT   OF   THE   RAILWAY          7 1 

by  water  from  three  weeks  to  a  month.  So  great 
were  the  difficulties  at  Plymouth  that  goods  had 
usually  to  go  by  sea  to  London. 

Yet  in  the  early  days  of  railways  great  speed 
was  attained  on  special  occasions.  Mr.  Allport 
has  recalled  that  in  1845,  before  the  era  of  tele- 
graphs, when  "the  battle  of  the  gauges"  (i.e.,  be- 
tween the  broad  and  the  narrow  gauge  system) 
"was  being  vigorously  carried  on,  I  wished  to 
show  what  the  narrow  gauge  could  do.  The  elec- 
tion of  George  Hudson,  as  member  for  Sunder- 
land,  had  that  day  taken  place,  and  I  availed  my- 
self of  the  event  to  see  how  quickly  I  could  get 
the  information  up  to  London,  have  it  printed  in 
the  Times  newspaper,  and  brought  back  to  Sun- 
derland.  The  election  was  over  at  four  o'clock 
in  the  afternoon,  and  by  about  five  o'clock  the 
returns  of  the  voting  for  every  half-hour  during 
the  poll  were  collected  from  the  different  booths, 
and  copies  were  handed  to  me.  I  had  ordered  a 
service  of  trains  to  be  in  readiness  for  the  journey, 
and  I  at  once  started  from  Sunderland  to  York, 
another  train  was  in  waiting  at  York  to  take  me 
to  Normington,  and  others  in  their  turn  to  Derby, 
to  Rugby,  to  Wolverton,  and  to  Euston.  Thence 
I  drove  to  the  Times  office  and  handed  my  manu- 
script to  Mr.  Delane,  who,  according  to  an  ar- 
rangement I  had  previously  made  with  him,  had 
it  immediately  set  up  in  type,  a  leader  written, 
both  inserted, and  a  lot  of  impressions  taken.  Two 
hours  were  thus  spent  in  London,  and  then  I 
set  off  on  my  return  journey  and  arrived  in  Sun- 
derland next  morning  at  about  ten  o'clock,  be- 
fore the  announcement  of  the  poll.  I  there  handed 
over  copies  I  had  brought  with  me  of  that  day's 


THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 


Times  newspaper,  containing  the  returns  of  what 
had  happened  in  Sunderland  the  afternoon  be- 
fore. Between  five  o'clock  in  the  evening  and  ten 


I 

& 

1 
3 

OS 

o 

-c 

o 

hJ 

CO 


fl 
'3 

h 


1) 


that  morning  I  had  traveled  600  miles,  besides 
spending  two  hours  in  London, — a  clear  run  of 
forty  miles  an  hour." 

It  was  at  this  period  of  the  railway  mania  that 


DEVELOPMENT   OF   THE   RAILWAY          73 

one  express  steamed  up  to  London,  118  miles,  in 
an  hour  and  a  half,  nearly  eighty  miles  an  hour. 

In  1846  the  distance  between  London  and 
Exeter  (193^4  miles)  was  regularly  accomplished 
in  four  hours  and  a  half.  In  the  same  year  the 
distance  between  London  and  Liverpool  (210 
miles)  occupied  just  six  hours. 

In  1842  the  Great  Western  Railway  caused 
some  interesting  experiments  to  be  made  with 
regard  to  speed.  On  one  occasion  an  expert 
driver  ran  his  train  over  the  eighteen  miles  be- 
tween London  and  Slough  in  fifteen  minutes, 
which  was  at  that  time  the  maximum  speed  which 
had  ever  been  attained  on  a  railway.  Six  years 
later  the  fifty-three  miles  between  London  and 
Didcot  were  traversed  in  forty-seven  minutes. 

For  many  years  the  reputation  of  being  the 
fastest  train  in  the  world  was  enjoyed  by  the 
Flying  Dutchman.  The  distance  between  Lon- 
don and  Swindon,  seventy-eight  miles,  was  regu- 
larly done  in  one  hour  and  twenty-seven  minutes, 
which  was  at  the  rate  of  fifty-three  miles  an  hour. 
In  1880,  Exeter,  194  miles,  was  reached  in  four 
and  a  quarter  hours,  or  at  an  average  pace,  in- 
cluding stoppages,  of  forty-five  and  a  half  miles 
an  hour. 

Compare  this  schedule  traveling  by  established 
routes  with  the  seven  hours  from  London  to 
Swindon  in  1830,  or  the  twenty  hours  from  Lon- 
don to  Exeter,  at  the  same  epoch  of  the  fast  mail- 
coach. 

Since  the  journey  between  London  and  Man- 
chester had  been  cut  down  to  four  and  a  half 
hours,  twenty-five  years  elapsed  before  it  was 
found  possible  to  diminish  it.  In  1885,  however, 


74  THE   STORY    OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

the  three  great  lines  had  twelve  expresses,  each 
accomplishing  the  distance  in  four  and  a  quarter 
hours,  on  some  portions  of  the  road  over  sixty 
miles  an  hour  being  made.*  Between  Crewe  and 
Rugby,  seventy-five  and  a  quarter  miles  were 
covered  in  one  hour  and  thirty-seven  minutes. 
From  Manchester  to  Sheffield  is  forty-one  miles, 
and  this  journey  is  regularly  done  in  fifty-nine 
minutes,  including  a  twenty-mile  gradient  and  a 
three-mile  tunnel.  It  became  possible  at  about 
the  same  time  for  a  resident  at  Grantham  to  travel 
to  London,  186  miles,  in  one  hour  and  fifty-seven 
minutes,  a  journey  which  would  have  taken  his 
grandfather  eleven  hours  to  accomplish  by  the 
best  mail-coach  on  the  road. 

By  a  new  service  London  and  Birmingham  are 
now  brought  within  two  hours  of  each  other. 
This  is  a  saving  of  a  full  half  hour  over  the  time 
for  1901.  London  to  Holyhead  now  takes  five 
hours. 

The  journey  from  London  to  Edinburgh  has 
from  time  immemorial  been  regarded  as  the  cri- 
terion of  rapid  traveling  in  Great  Britain.  We 
have  seen  that  the  high-water  mark  of  the  Edin- 
burgh mail  in  1820  was  forty  hours,  stoppages 
included.  To-day  one  may  complete  the  journey 
of  392  miles  via  the  Great  Northern  Railway  in 
eight  hours  and  fifty-five  minutes.  From  London 
to  Leicester  (100  miles)  is  now  regularly  done  in 
two  hours  ;  from  London  to  Leeds  (186  miles),  in 
three  hours,  fifty-five  minutes,  and  London  to 
Brighton  (fifty-one  miles),  in  fifty-one  minutes. 

To  the  Midland  Railway  is  due  the  credit  of 

*  The  duration  of  the  journey  has  now  (1903)  been  curtailed 
to  less  than  four  hours. 


DEVELOPMENT   OF  THE   RAILWAY          75 

first  running  third-class  carriages  by  all  trains. 
Up  to  March,  1872,  progress  for  the  ordinary  pas- 
senger was  provokingly  and  scandalously  slow. 
Not  only  was  the  average  speed  scarcely  more 
than  fifteen  miles  an  hour,  but  the  traveler  was 
forced  to  start  at  an  uncomfortably  early  hour  to 
catch  the  only  train  that  ran.  The  reform  was 
hailed  with  joy  all  over  the  kingdom.  "When," 
observed  Mr.  Allport,  "the  rich  man  travels,  or 
if  he  lies  abed  all  day,  his  capital  remains  undi- 
minished  and  perhaps  his  income  flows  in  all  the 
same.  But  when  a  poor  man  travels  he  has  not 
only  to  pay  his  fare,  but  to  sink  his  capital,  for 
his  time  is  his  capital;  and  if  he  now  consumes 
only  five  hours  instead  of  ten  in  making  a  jour- 
ney, he  has  saved  five  hours  of  time  for  useful 
labor — useful  to  himself,  to  his  family,  and  to 
society."  The  change,  which  had  taken  twenty- 
five  years  to  come  about,  resulted  in  enhancing 
the  passenger  traffic  of  the  English  railways  four- 
fold. 

If  we  wish  to  obtain  an  idea  of  the  speed  to 
which  railway  trains  were  brought  in  less  than 
fifty  years  after  their  introduction,  we  have  only 
to  compare  it  with  the  velocity  of  a  cannon-ball. 
According  to  the  investigations  of  Dr.  Hutton, 
the  flight  of  a  cannon-ball  with  a  range  of  6,700 
feet  takes  a  quarter  of  a  minute,  or  at  the  rate 
of  five  miles  a  minute,  or  300  miles  an  hour. 
Hence  it  follows  that  a  railway  train  moving  at 
seventy-five  miles  an  hour  has  one-fourth  of  the 
velocity  of  a  cannon-ball — moving  at  100  miles  an 
hour  it  has  one-third  that  velocity.  It  may  there- 
fore be  considered  as  a  huge  projectile,  subject 
to  the  same  laws  that  govern  projectiles,  but 


76  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

weighing  100  tons  instead  of  100  pounds.  When 
a  train  is  running  at  fifty  miles  an  hour,  the  pis- 
tons are  working  along  the  cylinders  at  the  rate 
of  800  feet  a  minute.  When  running  at  seventy 
miles  an  hour,  the  pace  of  the  train  is  at  the  rate 
of  105  feet  per  second,  so  that  if  two  trains  pass 
one  another,  each  going  at  this  speed,  they  would 
flash  past  each  other  in  a  single  second,  even  if 
one  were  seventy  yards  long. 

Nine-tenths  of  the  fast  or  express  trains  in 
England  reach  the  standard  of  "thirty  miles  an 
hour,  including  stops"  (or  a  journey  speed  of 
forty  miles  an  hour),  and  the  other  tenth  fall  short 
only  because  their  journey  is  exceptionally  hilly, 
or  exceptionally  brief,  or  subject  to  delay.  The 
above  regulation  test,  therefore,  for  any  train 
wishing  to  be  called  "express"  in  England  is  not 
an  artificial  one,  but  a  natural  definition  supplied 
by  the  companies  themselves  on  their  daily  time- 
tables.* 

A  modern  railway  authority  informs  us  that 
on  the  Continent  of  Europe  as  a  rule  a  train  is 
held  to  be  magnificent,  worthy  of  heroic  adjec- 
tives, and  not  to  be  rudely  attempted  by  third- 
class  passengers,  if  its  journey-speed  is  as  high 
as  twenty-nine  miles  an  hour,  trains  there  which 
attain  such  speed  form  a  group  and  tower  above 
the  rest,  just  as  in  England  it  is  trains  that  reach 
forty  miles  an  hour,  inclusive,  which  stand  apart 
from  the  common  stopping  train. 

Considerable  more  force  has  to  be  expended 
to  attain  thib  speed  than  would  appear  at  first 
sight.  "Imagine  a  train  shot  suddenly  out  from 
its  starting-point  at  forty  miles  an  hour,  main- 

*E.  Foxwell,  "  Express  Trains." 


DEVELOPMENT    OF   THE    RAILWAY 


77 


taining    with    unflagging    uniformity    this    same 
high  speed  uphill,  through  suburbs  and  junctions, 


0) 

(— ' 

h 

ci 
'rt 

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OJ 

t/1 

0) 

^ 

rt 
a; 
t-i 

O 


persisting  this  pace  without  a  moment's  pause 
for  two  or  three  hundred  miles  till  it  come  to  an 
instantaneous  stop  at  its  distant  terminus;  the 


78  THE  STORY   OF  RAPID   TRANSIT 

mildest  of  the  trains  we  call  "express"  will  arrive 
as  soon  as  this  imaginary  one,  though  our  actual 
train  has  had  to  labor  slowly  up  the  hills,  to  slack 
for  bridges,  curves,  or  junctions,  besides  con- 
suming precious  time  in  four  or  five  stoppages 
of  as  many  minutes  each.  The  feeblest  'express' 
is  as  smart  as  this;  what  then  shall  we  say  of 
trains  which  secure  an  'inclusive  speed'  of  nearly 
fifty  miles  an  hour  over  summits  of  1,000  feet?" 

The  Great  Northern  Railway  has  the  shortest 
route  to  Leeds,  Bradford,  York,  and  Edinburgh, 
being  eight  miles  shorter  to  the  latter  city  than 
the  North-Western,  and  fourteen  shorter  than 
the  Midland  route.  In  the  mere  matter  of  speed 
this  railway,  as  well  as  the  Midland,  is  superior 
to  the  oldest  and  most  punctual  of  the  English 
railways,  the  North-Western,  which  has  long  en- 
joyed the  distinction  of  being  called  the  ''leading 
line."  Its  rolling  stock  is  probably  the  best  in 
the  kingdom,  and  some  of  its  achievements  be- 
tween London  and  Liverpool  and  London  and 
Edinburgh  exhibit  a  very  high  rate  of  speed. 

In  the  summer  of  1888  the  three  great  lines 
which  start  from  Euston,  St.  Pancras,  and  King's 
Cross  resolved  upon  an  attempt  to  beat  their  own 
record  to  Edinburgh.  The  best  long  run  made 
up  to  that  time  was  that  achieved  by  a  special  train 
on  the  Great  Northern  Railway  in  July,  1880. 
It  was  conveying  the  Lord  Mayor  of  London  to 
Scarborough.  The  distance  from  London  to 
York,  1 88  miles,  was  accomplished  in  217  min- 
utes, which  implied  an  average,  including  a  ten 
minutes'  stoppage  at  Grantham,  of  fifty-two  miles 
an  hour.  The  first  fifty-three  miles  from  London 
were  done  in  an  hour,  not  ten  miles  of  the  road 


DEVELOPMENT   OF   THE   RAILWAY          79 

being  level.  Stoke,  100  miles,  was  passed  in  one 
hour  and  fifty-one  minutes;  while  between  Bark- 
stone  and  Tuxford,  twenty-two  and  a  quarter 
miles,  the  speed  was  at  the  rate  of  sixty-four 
miles  an  hour.  At  that  period,  the  ordinary  ex- 
press trains  of  the  line  occupied  three  hours  and 
forty-eight  minutes — or  twenty-one  minutes  more 
on  the  journey. 

In  August  took  place  the  first  of  the  exciting 
races  to  Edinburgh,  when  the  daily  performance 
of  each  of  the  rival  expresses  was  wired  in  detail 
to  the  newspapers.  The  origin  of  the  competi- 
tion was  the  action  of  the  Great  Northern  Rail- 
way in  announcing  some  months  before,  that  it 
would  carry  third-class  passengers  in  its  night 
express  to  Edinburgh  and  Glasgow,  which  took 
nine  hours  to  the  former  city  and  ten  hours 
twenty  minutes  to  the  latter.  This  was  throwing 
down  the  gauntlet  to  the  North-Western,  inas- 
much as  it  was  in  the  one  case  nearly  an  hour 
quicker  than  that  company's  best  third-class 
express. 

By  the  new  arrangement,  therefore,  third-class 
passengers  could  arrive  in  Edinburgh  one  hour 
sooner  by  the  Great  Northern  line.  The  doyen 
of  railways  quickly  responded  by  lowering  its 
time  to  nine  hours  between  Glasgow  and  Edin- 
burgh and  Euston.  In  addition,  a  new  express 
was  put  on  for  Perth,  leaving  Euston  at  10.30  and 
arriving  in  Perth  at  9.35,  twenty  minutes  quicker 
than  before.  Admirers  of  speed  were  delighted 
at  these  evidences  of  youthful  enterprise  on  the 
part  of  an  old-established  line  up  to  then  content 
to  work  its  trains  at  a  velocity  less  brilliant  than 
either  of  its  two  rivals. 


80  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID    TRANSIT 

Early  in  June  the  response  of  the  Great  North- 
ern came.  It  gave  notice  that  it  intended  forth- 
with to  shorten  its  Edinburgh  and  Glasgow  jour- 
neys by  half-an-hour  both  ways,  making  the  time 
for  Edinburgh  eight  and  a  half  hours,  and  for 
Glasgow  nine  hours  fifty  minutes.  The  inter- 
ested public  were  also  informed  that  the  Midland 
line  intended  to  lop  a  whole  hour  off  their  fastest 
time  to  Glasgow,  and  twenty-five  minutes  off  that 
to  Edinburgh,  thus  doing  the  former  journey  in 
eight  hours  twenty  minutes  (twenty  minutes 
longer  than  the  North- Western,  whose  route  is 
twenty  miles  shorter)  and  Edinburgh  in  nine  and 
three-quarter  hours. 

But  the  North-Western  was  not  to  be  beaten: 
it  felt  its  prestige  at  stake  and  abruptly  gave 
three  days'  notice  that  from  August  1st  they  too 
would  run  to  Edinburgh  in  eight  and  a  half  hours. 
This  sudden  move  at  the  eleventh  hour  seemed  to 
render  it  impossible  for  the  other  road  to  arrange 
reprisals  in  time  to  secure  the  bulk  of  the  holiday 
traffic.  Nevertheless,  the  Great  Northern  in  a 
few  hours  issued  its  working  notices  all  over  the 
line  announcing  that  from  August  ist  by  their 
route  the  journey  to  Scotland  would  be  done  in 
eight  hours.  The  third  competing  railway,  recog- 
nizing the  futility  of  further  long-distance  rivalry, 
fell  out  of  the  running  and  kept  to  their  previous 
programme.  The  last  days  of  July  were  a  stirring 
experience  for  the  " Office  of  the  Superintendent 
of  the  Line"  at  King's  Cross  and  Euston.  The 
urgent  introduction  of  such  extraordinary  "accel- 
erations" as  these,  involving  special  "shunts"  and 
signal-box  instructions  all  along  the  line  the 
whole  length  of  the  route,  demanded  the  utmost 


DEVELOPMENT   OF   THE   RAILWAY 


Si 


coolness  and  executive  skill — especially  as  the 
"accelerations"  were  wrought  in  the  very  busiest 
week  of  the  railway  year.  An  alarmist  cry  of 
''Danger"  went  up  from  certain  newspapers  and 
excitable  individuals,  and  all  sorts  of  horrors  were 
wildly  predicted,  as  a  result  of  this  velocity. 


: 


Interior  of  a  Third-class  Dining-car,  Midland  Railway. 

During  the  first  week  the  North-Western, 
finding  they  ran  over  Shap  summit  easily  in  the 
shortest  time  (at  fifty-one  and  a  half  miles  an 
hour),  and  the  Caledonian  still  more  easily  (fifty 
miles  an  hour),  gave  notice  that  they  would  equal 
the  speed  of  the  Great  Northern.  Yet  every  day 
the  rival  expresses  ran  within  the  time,  the  West 
Coast  train  on  the  opening  day  actually  saving 
fifteen  minutes  on  the  road,  arriving  at  Edin- 
6 


82  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

burgh  at  5.52.  The  ninety  miles  from  Preston 
to  Carlisle,  a  steep  incline,  was  done  in  eighty- 
nine  minutes.  As  the  rival  line  had  also  been 
running  under  time,  it  decided  that  its  express 
should  arrive  in  the  Scotch  capital  at  5.45,  or 
seven  and  three-quarter  hours,  from  London. 
The  North-Western  cheerfully  followed  suit,  and 
got  into  Edinburgh  in  seven  hours  thirty-eight 
minutes.  The  Great  Northern  then  did  the  jour- 
ney in  seven  hours  thirty-two  minutes,  and  with 
that  achievement  the  contest  suddenly  came  to  an 
end.  Negotiations  took  place  and  a  compromise 
was  effected,  the  West  Coast  relapsing  to  its  pre- 
vious programme  of  eight  hours,  while  the  East 
Coast,  being  eight  miles  shorter,  was  permitted 
to  make  the  transit  in  seven  and  three-quarter 
hours.  But  although  "racing"  ceased,  phenome- 
nal speed  was  maintained  to  the  end  of  the  month, 
and  on  August  28th  the  East  Coast  express 
reached  Edinburgh  at  5.29,  three  minutes  sooner 
than  the  best  previous  records.  The  North- 
Western  responded  with  a  farewell  performance, 
beating  this  record  by  one  minute  in  spite  of  the 
longer  distance.  On  one  day  of  this  race  of  1888, 
Crewe  to  Preston  (fifty-one  miles)  was  done  in 
fifty  minutes;  Preston  to  Carlisle  (ninety  miles) 
in  eighty-nine  minutes;  Carlisle  to  Edinburgh 
(lOO^  miles)  in  iO2l/2  minutes;  and  Newcastle  to 
Edinburgh  (124  miles)  in  124  minutes.  So 
smooth  was  the  motion  that  the  unsuspecting 
passengers  were  unaware  they  w7ere  taking  part 
in  a  feat  that,  on  level  ground,  would  have  been 
without  a  precedent. 

The  "race  to  the  North"  was  resumed  by  the 
rival  railways  in  1895.     In  June  of  that  year  the 


DEVELOPMENT    OF   THE   RAILWAY          83 

best  trains  between  London  and  Aberdeen  took 
eleven  hours  thirty-five  minutes  by  the  East 
Coast  route  (523  miles),  and  eleven  hours  fifty 
minutes  by  the  West  Coast  (540  miles).  From 
July  ist  the  latter  accelerated  their  time  by  ten 
minutes,  and  their  rivals,  taking  this  as  a  chal- 
lenge, immediately  lowered  their  time  by  twenty 
minutes.  The  West  Coast  responded  a  fortnight 
later  by  an  acceleration  of  forty  minutes,  and  a 
pitched'  battle  ensued,  raging  fiercely  for  a 
month.  Although  the  West  Coast  maintained 
the  lead  in  arrival  at  Aberdeen  almost  through- 
out, yet  allowing  for  stoppages,  weight  of  train, 
etc.,  there  was  not  much  to  choose  between  the 
two  competitors.  On  August  22d  the  8  P.M. 
train  from  Euston  reached  Aberdeen  at  4.32  A.M., 
an  acceleration  of  no  less  than  three  hours  eigh- 
teen minutes  on  its  speed  before  the  racing  be- 
gan. This  meant  an  average  of  63.3  miles  an 
hour,  including  stoppages.  The  expense,  if  not 
the  risk,  of  these  high-pressure  speeds  led  to  an 
agreement,  and  the  rivalry  suddenly  ceased. 
Nevertheless,  the  September  Bradshaw  showed 
that  ten  and  a  half  hours  would  be  the  future  time 
between  London  and  Aberdeen,  a  saving  of  more 
than  one  hour  on  the  old  time,  besides  a  consid- 
erable improvement  in  the  speed  to  Inverness, 
Perth,  Glasgow,  and  Edinburgh.  Moreover  the 
contest  restored  to  Great  Britain  the  record  for 
daily  long-distance  fast  traveling  which  for  three 
previous  years  had  been  held  by  the  Empire 
State  Express,  which  runs  from  New  York  to 
Buffalo  (440  miles)  in  eight  hours  forty  minutes. 
This  now  became  beaten  both  by  the  West  Coast 
time  to  Perth  (450  miles)  in  eight  hours  forty 


84  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

minutes,  and  by  the  East  Coast  time  to  Dundee 
(452  miles)  in  eight  hours  forty-seven  minutes. 

As  a  rejoinder,  on  September  nth  the  New 
York  Central  Railway  ran  a  racing  train  from 
New  York  to  Buffalo,  which  performed  the  jour- 
ney in  six  hours  fifty-one  minutes,  an  average 
speed  (including  stoppages)  of  64.22  miles  an 
hour. 

Another  important  acceleration  of  railway 
speed  brought  about  in  1895  was  on  the  Great 
Western  Railway  between  London  and  Bristol, 
Bath  and  the  west  of  England  generally.  It  was 
accomplished  by  the  purchase  of  the  Swindon 
Junction  Hotel  property  which  was  held  by  its 
owners  under  an  extraordinary  agreement  which 
made  it  obligatory  to  stop  all  passenger  trains 
passing  through  Swindon,  ten  minutes  for  re- 
freshments. This  ridiculous  arrangement  dated 
from  1841  and  was  for  ninety-nine  years.  In 
order  to  annul  it  the  Great  Western  Company 
had  to  pay  no  less  than  £  100,000. 

Since  the  "race  to  Edinburgh"  of  1888,  there 
had  been  an  understanding  that  neither  of  the 
rival  companies  should  time  their  day  trains 
quicker  than  eight  and  a  half  hours.  Twelve 
years  later,  however,  in  November,  1900,  the 
East  Coast  route  announced  that  thereafter  it 
would  accelerate  its  "Flying  Scotsman"  so  as  to 
do  the  journey  in  eight  and  a  quarter  hours. 
The  West  Coast  Company  did  the  same.  It  was 
believed  that  the  first-named  company  were  ex- 
tremely desirous  of  winning  back  to  Great  Britain 
the  record  for  railway  speed  which,  in  the  inter- 
val, had  again  passed  first  to  the  United  States 
and  then  to  France.  For  the  title  of  the  fastest 


DEVELOPMENT   OF   THE   RAILWAY          85 

train  in  the  world,  once  belonging  to  the  "Flying 
Scotsman,"  was  in  1900  bestowed  upon  the  "Sud 
Express"  of  the  Orleans  Company,  which  aver- 
aged fifty-four  miles  an  hour,  including  stop- 
pages, for  a  journey  of  486  miles.  But  this  rate 
of  speed  is  a  remarkable  exception  for  France. 

The  accepted  definition  of  an  English  or  Amer- 
ican express  train  is  one  whose  speed,  inclusive 
of  stops,  is  at  least  forty  miles  an  hour.  This 
figure,  we  are  told,  exhibits  the  relative  efficiency 
and  energy  of  the  traffic  administration,  while  the 
"running  average,"  as  it  is  called,  may  show  a 
much  higher  degree  of  speed,  excluding  the 
stops. 

Very  few  Continental  express  trains  attain  a 
journey  speed  of  forty  miles  an  hour,  the  aver- 
age being  considerably  less.  In  1888  the  dis- 
tance between  London  and  Brindisi,  1,455  miles, 
took  fifty-two  hours,  which,  fast  as  it  would  have 
seemed  to  our  grandfathers,  was  yet  only  an 
average  of  twenty-six  miles,  or  no  faster  than 
such  ships  as  the  Umbria,  Etruria,  and  Express 
went  on  the  Atlantic. 

The  St.  Gothard  Tunnel  was  begun  in  1872 
and  finished  in  1880;  it  measures  nine  and  a 
quarter  miles  in  length,  is  twenty-six  feet  wide 
and  twenty-one  high,  and  cost  £2,270,000  to 
build.  In  connection  with  the  railway,  which 
climbs  up  the  lower  slopes  of  the  St.  Gothard 
and  descends  on  the  other  side,  it  is  possible  to 
cross  the  Alps  from  Lucerne  to  Bellinzona,  105 
miles,  in  three  and  a  half  hours ;  fifty  years  ago 
it  required  twenty-three  hours. 

In  the  United  States,  the  country  perhaps 
where  time  and  speed  are  most  prized  in  the 


86  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

affairs  of  life,  rapid  transit  has,  within  the  last 
twenty  years,  grown  to  be  universal.  Urban  and 
local  transit  forms  a  feature  of  itself,  but  in  the 
speed  of  the  ordinary  railways  it  is  only  lately 
that  the  American  lines  have  equaled  those  of 
Great  Britain.  The  best  running  in  the  United 
States  is  between  New  York  (Jersey  City)  and 
Philadelphia,  between  New  York  and  Buffalo, 
and  between  Boston  and  Providence.  The 
journey  from  Camden  to  Atlantic  City  (SS1/^ 
miles)  is  done  in  fifty  minutes. 

The  first  railway  built  in  the  United  States  was 
from  the  granite-quarries  of  Quincy,  Mass.,  to 
tide-water,  length  five  miles ;  begun  in  1826  and 
completed  in  1827,  it  was  built  to  supply  the 
granite  for  the  Bunker  Hill  Monument,  and  made 
of  wooden  rails  laid  on  granite  sills,  with  a  strap- 
rail  of  rolled  iron.  The  second  road  was  begun  in 
January,  1827,  and  completed  in  May  of  the  same 
year,  extending  from  the  coal-mines  to  the  Le- 
high  River  at  Mauch  Chunk,  Pa. — a  distance  of 
nine  miles.  The  loaded  cars  passed  down  the 
inclined  planes  by  gravity,  and  the  empty  cars 
were  drawn  up  by  mules.  The  rails  were  of 
timber,  covered  with  a  strap  of  iron.  In  1828  the 
Delaware  and  Hudson  Canal  Company  con- 
structed a  railway,  sixteen  miles  long,  from  its 
coal-mines  to  Honesdale,  the  termination  of  the 
canal,  to  transport  the  anthracite  coal  to  tide- 
water. These  were  followed  rapidly  by  the 
Baltimore  and  Ohio,  the  Mohawk  and  Hudson, 
the  South  Carolina,  the  Camden  and  Amboy, 
the  Ithaca  and  Owego,  and  the  Lexington  and 
Ohio,  which  at  the  close  of  the  year  1830  had 


DEVELOPMENT   OF   THE   RAILWAY  87 

92  miles  built  and  463  miles  projected  or  under 
construction.  All  of  these  roads,  with  the  single 
exception  of  the  Delaware  and  Hudson,  \vere 
built  for  and  operated  by  horse-power. 

In  January,  1828,  Horatio  Allen,  of  the  Dela- 
ware and  Hudson  Canal  Company,  went  to  Eng- 
land to  procure  the  iron  rails  for  that  company's 
road,  and  also,  at  his  discretion,  to  order  three 
locomotive  engines.  He  accordingly  ordered 
one  engine  from  the  works  of  Foster,  Rastrick 
&  Co.,  of  Stourbridge,  and  two  engines  from 
the  works  of  Robert  Stephenson  at  Newcastle. 
These  orders  were  given  in  the  early  summer 
of  1828,  and  the  engines  were  received  in  New 
York  in  the  following  winter  (1828-29).  The 
burning  of  anthracite  coal  in  the  furnaces  of 
engines  was  the  point  to  be  demonstrated  by  the 
Delaware  and  Hudson  Canal  Company,  whose 
extensive  mines  were  waiting  a  demand  on  the 
part  of  the  public,  the  total  consumption  of  an- 
thracite coal  having  reached  but  about  80,000 
tons  yearly.  In  the  spring  of  1829  one  of  these 
three  engines  was  ordered  to  be  sent  by  river 
and  canal  to  Honesdale,  Pa.,  the  initial  point  of 
the  company's  railway.  The  accident  which  sent 
the  Stourbridge  engine  rather  than  either  of  the 
other  two  had  not  been  accounted  for.  The 
other  two  engines  were  precise  counterparts, 
and  identical  in  boiler,  engine,  plan,  and  appur- 
tenances with  the  Rocket,  by  the  same  maker, 
which  subsequently  startled  the  world  by  its 
performances  at  Liverpool.  The  Stourbridge 
Lion,  as  the  engine  was  named,  was  put  upon  the 
track — built  of  hemlock  timbers  and  strap-rails, 


THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

with  timber  trestles  thirty-five  feet  in  height,  and 
curves  of  720  feet  radius — and  on  August  8,  1829, 
Mr.  Allen  ran  the  engine  himself  for  six  miles  at 
good  speed  amid  the  cheers  of  the  incredulous 
spectators.  No  load  was  attached,  as  it  was 
feared  that  it  would  prove  too  severe  for  the 
road,  but  it  was  the  first  trip  ever  made  on  a 
railway  by  a  locomotive  engine  in  America. 

The  first  locomotive  built  in  the  United  States 
was  made  by  the  West  Point  Foundry  for  the 
South  Carolina  Railroad  Company,  after  plans 
by  the  chief  engineer,  Horatio  Allen,  and  was 
first  put  upon  the  road  November  2,  1830.  Thus 
began  an  industry  that  in  the  hands  of  Baldwin, 
Campbell,  Rogers,  and  other  masters  has  grown 
to  be  one  of  the  most  important  in  the  United 
States.  In  speed,  durability,  and  in  its  adapt- 
ability to  every  kind  of  condition  and  service 
the  American  locomotive  is  unequaled,  and 
stands  to-day  one  of  the  most  perfect  monu- 
ments of  human  skill  and  ingenuity. 

The  flat  rail  was  soon  abandoned  in  the  United 
States,  the  New  Orleans  and  Lake  Pontchar- 
train  Railroad  adopting  the  T-rail  in  its  construc- 
tion in  1830-31.  In  1840  there  were  2,816  miles 
of  railroads  in  the  United  States;  in  1850,  9,015 
miles;  in  1860,  30,600  miles;  in  1870,  52,856 
miles;  in  1880,  93,526  miles;  in  1890,  161,397 
miles;  in  1900,  193,304. 

In  the  old  days  it  took  a  whole  day,  with 
relay  of  horses,  to  travel  from  Baltimore  to 
Washington,  a  distance  of  only  forty  miles ; 
when  railways  were  introduced  it  was  accom- 
plished in  two  hours ;  in  President  Lincoln's 


DEVELOPMENT   OF   THE    RAILWAY          89 

time  it  was  done  in  a  little  more  than  an  hour. 
It  now  regularly  takes  forty-five  minutes,  and 
has  been  done  in  less. 

The  ninety  miles  between  New  York  and 
Philadelphia  is  now  covered  in  ninety  minutes. 
The  journey  to  Chicago,  911  miles,  takes  less 
than  twenty-four  hours,  by  one  line ;  and  al- 
though sixty  miles  longer  by  another  route,  the 
New  York  Central,  is  accomplished  in  the  same 
time,  at  an  average  speed  for  nearly  1,000  miles 
of  forty  miles  an  hour.  And  both  the  Pennsyl- 
vania and  New  York  Central  now  have  trains 
covering  the  distance  from  New  York  to  Chi- 
cago in  twenty  hours.  Chicago  to  San  Fran- 
cisco takes  eighty-nine  hours  and  to  cross  the 
entire  continent  from  New  York,  four  days, 
eight  hours. 

In  1902  in  Great  Britain  the  three  northern 
companies  had  together  forty  expresses  between 
London  and  Scotland.  In  1883  there  were  six- 
teen; in  1885  there  were  nineteen,  and  in  Au- 
gust, 1888,  twenty-nine.  There  is  thus  an  in- 
crease of  fifty  per  cent,  in  the  number  of  Scotch 
expresses  since  1883,  and  their  average  speed 
has  also  increased. 

On  the  Great  Western  there  are  four  ex- 
press trains  (led  by  the  Dutchman  and  Zulu) 
which  have  an  average  speed,  including  stops, 
of  fifty  miles  an  hour  between  London  and 
Exeter.  The  distance  between  London  and 
Penzance  was  covered  in  eight  hours  fifty-five 
minutes  in  1889 ;  it  is  now  done  in  eight  and  a 
half  hours. 

The  following  may  be  taken  as  the  best  ex- 
press service  now  regularly  running  in  various 


90  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

parts  of  the  globe  in  miles  per  hour,  including 
and  excluding  stops,  respectively :- 

England.          .  London  to  Birmingham  .  53.4     58 

United  States  .  Camden  to  Atlantic  City  .  ...       61.3 

France    .          .  Paris  to  Calais  .         .  •  5^        66.6 

Germany          .  Berlin  to  Hamburg  .  .  393     43.5. 

As  to  the  average  rate  for  express  trains  we 
may  quote  the  appended  figures,  all  trains  run- 
ning above  forty  miles  an  hour  being  "express" 
in  Great  Britain  and  America,  and  all  above 
twenty-nine  miles  an  hour  on  the  Continent  :- 

Great  Britain,  with  stops,  41.6;  without  stops,  44.6 

France  "  32.8  "            36.2 

Holland  "  32.5  35 

Germany  31.7  34.3 

Belgium  31.7  33-5 

Austria  "  30  32 

Denmark  "  30  32 

Italy  "  29>£  31.2 

Sweden  "  29  "            31.5 

Russia  "  29  "            31.6 

United  States  "  41.4  " 

The  speed  of  American  expresses  was,  fifteen 
years  ago,  from  thirty-five  to  forty  miles  an 
hour.  It  has  now  been  raised  to  over  forty.  In 
France  the  Northern  Railway  runs  its  expresses 
at  an  average  of  thirty-seven,  and  the  Paris, 
Lyons  and  Mediterranean  at  thirty-four  miles 
an  hour.  Several  of  the  German  expresses 
cover  thirty-six  miles  an  hour ;  the  Swiss  ex- 
presses, over  difficult  gradients,  only  twenty- 
two  miles ;  the  Dutch  expresses,  thirty-three 
and  a  half  miles;  the  Belgian,  thirty-three 


DEVELOPMENT   OF   THE   RAILWAY          91 

miles ;  the  Scandinavian,  twenty-one  miles ;  the 
Italian,  twenty-seven  miles ;  the  Indian,  thirty- 
three  miles;  and  the  Russian  thirty-four  miles 
an  hour. 

The  journey  from  Berlin  to  St.  Petersburg, 
1,028  miles,  takes  forty-six  hours,  or  an  average 
of  thirty-two  and  a  half  miles  an  hour.  Com- 
pare this  with  an  express  on  the  Lake  Shore  and 
Michigan  Southern  Railway  which  did  the  jour- 
ney between  Buffalo  and  Cleveland,  183  miles, 
in  187  minutes,  exclusive  of  stops.  Allowing 
for  time  consumed  in  slowing  down,  172  miles 
of  the  distance  was  run  in  161  minutes,  averag- 
ing 64.26  miles  an  hour.  Short  distances  were 
covered  at  the  rate  of  seventy-five  miles  an  hour. 

The  Orient  Express  leaves  Paris  and  Constan- 
tinople twice  a  week,  and  takes  five  days  to  do 
the  journey.  By  leaving  London  at  10  A.M.,  and 
traveling  by  Chalons,  one  reaches  Vienna  at 
5.50  the  following  evening  ;  Budapest  at  1 1  P.M.  ; 
Belgrade  at  6  A.M.  ;  Sofia  at  4  P.M.  ;  and  the  con- 
clusion of  the  third  day  finds  you  at  Constan- 
tinople. 

The  Indian  mail  train,  chartered  by  the  Brit- 
ish Government,  traverses  1,375  miles,  and  in 
fifty-eight  and  a  quarter  hours  reaches  Brindisi, 
where  the  passengers  take  a  steamer  for  Alex- 
andria, and  from  there  reach  Bombay  in  four- 
teen days  from  London. 

The  distance  between  Paris  and  Marseilles 
(536  miles)  was  in  1888  done  in  fourteen  hours 
nineteen  minutes.  The  speed  has  since  been 
raised  to  fifty-seven  miles  an  hour.  The  fastest 
train  in  France  is  that  between  Paris  and  Calais 
(185^2  miles),  doing  the  journey  in  three  hours 


92  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

fifteen  minutes.  This  excels  the  time  of  any  fast 
train  in  England. 

Germany  and  Belgium,  while  not  as  bad  as 
some  other  countries  in  this  respect,  such  as 
Italy  and  Spain,  are  yet  far  behind  England  and 
America  in  the  matter  of  rapid  railway  transit, 
perhaps  owing  to  the  fact  of  state-owned  lines 
and  the  consequent  lack  of  competition. 

In  1891,  on  the  Canadian  Pacific  line,  a  special 
train  conveyed  the  Japanese  mail  from  Vancou- 
ver to  Brockville,  Ont.  (2,800  miles),  in  seventy- 
seven  hours,  or  a  speed  of  thirty-six  miles  an 
hour  for  the  whole  of  this  vast  run.  On  the 
Grand  Trunk  Railwav  of  Canada  the  best  service 

•/ 

is  36.8  miles,  including  stops,  and  39.2  excluding 
stops.  The  best  service  in  India  is  from  Bombay 
to  Calcutta,  about  twenty-five  miles  an  hour.  In 
Australia  from  Melbourne  to  Sydney  is  run  at 
thirty-three  miles  an  hour,  including  stops,  and 
thirty-seven  excluding  stops. 

Less  than  forty  years  ago  Jules  Verne  wrote 
his  entertaining  romance,  "Around  the  World  in 
Eighty  Days."  He  was  thought  to  have  ex- 
ceeded all  bounds  of  possibility;  at  that  time  the 
circumnavigation  of  the  globe  never  had  been 
accomplished  in  less  time  than  121  days.  In  1873 
it  was  done  in  109  days.  Eventually,  an  Amer- 
ican performed  the  feat  in  ninety  days,  and  in 
1891  a  Miss  Bisland  lowered  the  time  to  seventy- 
two  days.  Since  then  the  record  has  stood  at 
sixty-nine  days,  the  main  obstacle  being  to  trav- 
erse speedily  the  mighty  tract  of  Asia. 

Eastern  Siberia,  which  a  few  years  ago  was 
one  of  the  most  remote  districts  on  the  face  of 
the  globe,  will  soon  be  as  accessible  as  Canada. 


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94  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

The  connection  between  Russia  and  Siberia 
forms  the  greatest  railway  scheme  in  the  world. 
The  first  sod  was  cut  at  Vladivostock  May  24, 
1891  ;  and  to  facilitate  the  work  of  construction 
the  line  was  divided  into  three  parts.  When  the 
whole  is  completed  in  1904  it  will  be  possible  for 
a  traveler  to  circumnavigate  the  globe  in  thirty 
days!  The  distance  from  Moscow  to  Kaidalovo 
is  4,146  miles.  Even  in  the  incomplete  state  of 
the  line,  by  means  of  the  lakes  and  rivers,  unin- 
terrupted steam  communication  between  the  rail- 
way system  of  Europe  and  Vladivostock  on  the 
Pacific  was  rendered  possible  in  1901.  From 
Cheliabinski,  the  first  station  in  Western  Siberia, 
to  Stretensk  via  Omsk,  Tomsk,  and  Irkutsk  is 
a  distance  of  2,762  miles.  This  section  of  the 
journey  comprises  the  passage  of  Lake  Baikal, 
just  beyond  the  Irkutsk.  For  this  passage  ice- 
breaker ferries  have  been  specially  built,  capable 
of  transporting  a  complete  railway  train  across 
the  lake.  From  Stretensk  a  steamer  travels  1,443 
miles  to  Khabarovsk,  and  from  the  latter  place 
to  Vladivostock  by  rail  is  485^/2  miles.  The  en- 
tire journey  takes  seventeen  days. 

From  Paris  to  Vladivostock  was  timed  in  1901 
at  twenty-four  and  a  half  days,  and  a  further 
reduction  of  time  will  be  secured  now  that  the 
railway  round  the  south  end  of  Lake  Baikal  is 
completed. 

At  present  there  is  no  direct  fast  train  from 
Paris  or  Berlin  to  Moscow,  but  as  soon  as  the 
Siberian  Railway  begins  to  run  through  trains, 
this  gap  between  West  and  East  will  be  bridged. 
Yet,  strange  to  say,  it  takes  even  now  less  time 
to  reach  London  from  St.  Petersburg  than  from 


DEVELOPMENT   OF   THE   RAILWAY          95 

Naples.  The  traveler  leaves  by  the  Nord  Ex- 
press at  10  A.M1.,  Monday,  and  by  3  P.M.  on 
Wednesday  he  is  on  the  banks  of  the  Neva — 
fifty-three  hours.  By  this  same  express  Berlin 
is  twenty-one  hours  from  London. 

Quite  recently  the  Siberian  (or  Eastern  China) 
Railway  has  come  to  an  arrangement  with  the 
International  Sleeping"  Car  Company  for  im- 
proving the  facilities  of  travel  on  the  line.  To 
this  end  100  sleeping-cars  are  supplied  by  the 
company,  which  will  be  attached  to  the  express 
trains  running  between  Irkutsk,  Vladivostock, 
and  Port  Arthur.  These  through  trains  will  be 
made  up  once  a  week  exactly  on  the  same  lines 
as  the  through  trains  which  run  no\v  between 
Moscow  and  Irkutsk,  and  one  car  will  perform 
the  entire  journey  from  Moscow  to  Peking. 
With  the  introduction  of  this  train  service  it  will 
be  possible  to  travel  overland  from  London  to 
Peking  in  fourteen  days.  In  1804  it  took 
twenty-nine  \veeks. 

•/ 

The  first  attempt  to  apply  electric  power  for 
the  propulsion  of  railway  locomotives  was  by 
R.  Davidson  on  the  Edinburgh  and  Glasgow 
Railway  in  1842;  but  a  speed  of  only  four  miles 
an  hour  was  attained  and  the  project  was  aban- 
doned. Electricity  was  employed  in  1881  by 
Messrs.  Siemens  &  Halske  on  an  electric  rail- 
way in  Berlin  ;  a  line  being  subsequently  built 
one  and  a  half  miles  long  from  Charlottenburg 
to  the  Spandauer  Bock.  They  also  applied  the 
system  to  a  short  railway  at  Amsterdam  and  to 
another  in  Zankerode  in  Saxony.  Great  atten- 
tion was  attracted  in  that  year  to  an  electric  line 
operated  at  the  International  Electrical  Exhibi- 


96  THE   STORY    OF  RAPID   TRANSIT 

tion  in  Paris  by  the  Siemens  system.  It  carried 
an  average  of  13,000  passengers  per  week,  few 
amongst  whom  did  not  perceive  the  possibilities 
which  electricity  offered  to  the  future  of  rapid 
transit.  Two  years  later  an  electric  railway,  six 
miles  long,  was  opened  in  Ireland,  between  Port- 
rush  and  Bushmills  in  the  north  of  Ireland.  The 
conductor  employed  was  a  third  rail,  electricity 
being  transmitted  through  this  conductor  by 
means  of  steel  brushes  to  the  Siemens  motor  by 
which  the  car  was  propelled.  The  dynamo  ma- 
chines were  driven  by  the  power  of  a  natural 
water-fall  of  twenty-six  feet,  causing  two  tur- 
bines to  revolve  at  a  speed  225  revolutions  per 
minute,  each  of  which  was  capable  of  yielding 
fifty  horse-power.  The  cars  on  this  road  ran  at 
the  rate  of  twelve  miles  an  hour.  It  was  not 
long  after  this  that  a  number  of  electric  tram- 
ways or  railways  were  constructed  in  various 
parts  of  Europe  and  North  America.  The  Liv- 
erpool overhead  railway  was  opened  in  1893. 


CHAPTER  V 
THE    TELEGRAPH— WIRELESS    TELEGRAPHY 

WHEN  Shakespeare  made  Robin  Gooclfellow 
declare  that  he  would  girdle  this  terrestrial  globe 
in  forty  minutes,  it  was  considered  a  ludicrous 
stretch  of  the  poet's  imagination.  No  one  could 
have  dared  to  suppose  that  the  day  would  come 
when  such  a  statement  would  become  a  mere 
truism — indeed,  a  far  too  modest  statement  of  a 
fact  which  has  grown  commonplace. 


THE   TELEGRAPH  97 

The  idea  of  annihilating  time  and  space  in 
communication  by  distant  signals  is  sufficiently 
ancient  to  have  occurred  even  to  the  most  un- 
civilized tribes.  The  North  American  aborigi- 
nes were  wont  to  convey  intelligence  thus  from 
hill  to  hill,  and  the  Hottentots  communicated 
with  each  other  by  means  of  hill-top  fires. 

It  is  not  requisite  to  mention  the  various 
means  of  conveying  information  to  a  distance 
by  means  of  sound  known  to  our  ancestors,  but 
it  might  be  profitable  to  glance  at  the  origin 
of  Telegraphs,  before  electricity  came  to  be  em- 
ployed. 

The  first  practical  telegraph  dates  from  1684, 
and  was  that  of  Dr.  Hooke,  the  mathematician, 
an  inventor  of  many  ingenious  instruments. 
His  method  consisted  in  exposing  successively 
as  many  different  shaped  figures  or  signs  as 
there  are  letters  in  the  alphabet.  If  used  in 
the  daytime,  they  might  be  squares,  circles,  tri- 
angles, etc.,  and  at  night  torches  or  other  lights 
disposed  in  a  certain  order.  These  characters 
or  signs  were  to  be  brought  forward  from  be- 
hind a  screen  attached  to  a  movable  rod.  Of 
this  "telegraph''  the  stations  were  to  be  at  such 
convenient  distances  as  to  enable  the  signals  to 
be  seen  with  a  moderately  powerful  telescope. 
It  is  obvious  that  such  a  plan,  although  clever, 
was  also  very  complicated,  owing  to  the  number 
of  signals.  But  its  inventor  was  so  confident  of 
its  practical  utility  that  he  declared  that  "the 
same  character  might  be  seen  at  Paris  within  a 
minute  after  it  had  been  exposed  in  London." 
It  is  certainly  a  pity  that  the  system  was  not 


98  THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

tried,  at  least  between  London  and  York  or 
Edinburgh. 

More  than  a  century  later,  when  Europe  was 
in  the  throes  of  war,  many  experiments  were 
made  with  the  telegraph,  the  principal  object 
being  to  simplify  the  mechanism. 

The  first  to  render  a  telegraph  available  for 
practical  purposes  was  probably  Amontons  in 
1690.  It  is  related  by  Fontenelle  that  he  in- 
vented "a  means  to  make  known  all  that  was 
wished  to  a  very  great  distance — for  example, 
from  Paris  to  Rome — in  a  very  short  time, 
three  or  four  hours,  and  even  without  the  news 
becoming  known  in  all  the  intervening  space." 
This  proposition,  so  paradoxical  and  chimerical 
in  appearance,  was  executed  over  a  small  extent 
of  country.  The  secret  consisted  in  placing  in 
several  consecutive  stations  persons  who,  by 
means  of  telescopes,  having  perceived  certain 
signals  at  the  preceding  station,  transmitted 
them  to  the  next  and  so  on  in  succession ;  and 
these  different  signals  were  so  many  letters  of 
our  alphabet,  of  which  the  key  was  known  only 
at  Paris  and  Rome. 

Other  attempts  were  made  in  the  course  of 
the  ensuing  century  to  induce  the  French  Gov- 
ernment to  take  up  various  schemes  of  teleg- 
raphy. At  last,  when  the  country  was  plunged 
into  the  horrors  of  war,  one  Claude  Chappe  laid 
plans  before  the  Legislature  in  1792,  assuring 
them  that  "the  speed  of  the  correspondence 
would  be  such  that  the  legislative  body  would 
be  able  to  send  their  orders  to  the  frontiers  and 
receive  an  answer  back  during  the  continuance 
of  a  sitting." 


THE   TELEGRAPH  99 

After  much  vexatious  delay  the  authorities 
approved  of  the  scheme,  and  Chappe,  with  the 
title  of  Ingenieur  Telegraphe,  was  directed  to 
construct  a  telegraph  from  Paris  to  Lille.  The 
line,  with  its  apparatus  (a  combination  of  a  pole, 
a  beam,  movable  arms  and  ropes)  which  al- 
lowed of  the  transmission  of  192  different  sig- 
nals, was  completed  in  two  years.  The  first 
message  sent  announced  a  victory.  On  the  last 
day  of  November,  1794,  Carnot  entered  the  As- 
sembly with  the  news,  "Conde  is  given  up  to 
the  Republic !  The  surrender  took  place  this 
morning  at  six.''  The  Chamber  voted  that  "the 
army  of  the  North  had  deserved  well  of  the 
country;"  this  message  was  sent  instantly  to 
headquarters,  and  before  the  day's  session 
broke  up  the  members  \vere  informed  that  their 
orders  had  been  transmitted  150  miles  to  Lille 
and  acknowledged  by  the  commander  there. 

Such  a  successful  result  of  course  led  to  the 
immediate  formation  of  other  lines  which  ra- 
diated from  the  French  capital  to  all  parts  of  the 
kingdom.  The  signals  (depending  on  varying 
positions  of  the  beam  and  arms)  were  conveyed 
with  great  rapidity ;  and  to  avoid  confusion,  the 
movable  arms  on  the  right  of  the  central  post 
were  reserved  exclusively  for  Government  mes- 
sages, those  on  the  left  being  employed  in  the 
service  of  the  line.  By  this  means,  accidents 
or  delays  could  be  reported  without  detriment 
to  the  official  despatch ;  and  the  Government 
was  enabled  to  employ  a  cipher  code  of  its 
own. 

From  Paris  to  Calais,  a  distance  of  152  miles, 
there  were  thirty-three  stations,  and  a  message 


IOO         THE   STORY   OF   RAPID    TRANSIT 

could  be  sent  from  one  extremity  to  the  other 
in  three  minutes ;  to  Stfasburg,  255  miles  and 
forty-four  stations,  in  six  and  a  half  minutes ;  to 
Toulon,  317  miles  and  100  stations,  in  twenty 
minutes.  The  longest  lines  were  to  Brest  and 
Bayonne,  the  former  325  miles,  the  latter  425 ; 
and  altogether  there  were  519  stations,  the  an- 
nual cost  of  the  service  amounting  to  £40,000. 
The  brothers  of  the  inventor  Chappe  succeeded 
him  in  turn,  the  last  being  in  office  until  1830, 
when  the  Revolution  of  that  year  deprived  him 
of  his  post. 

A  system  of  such  value  could  not  but  be 
instantly  appreciated  by  neighboring  coun- 
tries, whose  enterprising  inventors  proposed  to 
each  Government  various  forms  of  apparatus. 
Among  those  who  submitted  their  plans  was  the 
father  of  the  celebrated  Maria  Edgeworth,  who 
contrived  a  telegraph  of  four  wedge-shaped 
boards,  mounted  on  the  tops  of  poles  and  so 
pivoted  as  to  assume  various  positions.  Edge- 
worth  believed  his  system  was  easily  capable  of 
serving  for  the  transmission  of  messages  all  the 
way  between  England  and  India. 

Another  inventor,  named  Gamble,  devised  an 
apparatus  of  shutters  to  fill  the  openings  in  a 
window  frame,  different  signals  being  conveyed 
by  the  alternate  opening  and  shutting  of  the 
spaces.  Lord  George  Murray  in  1795  substi- 
tuted a  different  arrangement  of  shutters;  they 
being  six  in  number,  painted  black,  the  different 
letters  and  figures  being  indicated  by  the  situa- 
tion of  the  open  shutter.  The  Admiralty  adopt- 
ed this  plan  for  a  telegraph  between  London  and 
Dover.  In  1806,  Davis's  sliding  shutter  in- 


THE   TELEGRAPH  IOI 

creased  the  value  and  celerity  of  Murray's  ar- 
rangement, but  ten  years  later  the  whole  prin- 
ciple of  shutters  was  abandoned  by  the  authori- 
ties for  a  modification  of  the  older  movable  ,arm 
system.  In  1816  the  telegraph  or;  semaphore, 
long  familiar  to  the  public,  on  .the  root  of  the 
Admiralty,  was  erected.  It  was  inveytecj^lby  Sir 
Home  Popham  and  consisted  simply  of  an  up- 
right pole  with  two  movable  arms.  It  was 
not  capable  of  a  large  number  of  signals ;  but 
it  proved  simple  and  effective  and  the  angu- 
lar position  was  easily  seen  at  a  distance. 
The  time  between  London  and  Dover  was 
reduced  for  long  messages,  and  Popham's 
telegraph  continued  in  use  until  it,  and  all 
its  kind,  was  superseded  by  the  wonder-work- 
ing magnetic  flash.  It  was,  of  course,  useless 
at  night,  or  in  fogs  and  dull  weather ;  and  for 
three  quarters  of  the  year  the  telegraph  from 
the  capital  to  Portsmouth  stood  idle.  As  an 
illustration  of  one  of  its  drawbacks,  on  one  oc- 
casion, when  tidings  of  moment  were  expected 
from  Spain,  the  Admiralty  officials  received  a 
message — "Wellington  defeated."  The  utmost 
disappointment  and  depression  prevailed,  until 
the  arrival  of  the  royal  messenger  with  the 
despatches,  when  it  was  found  that  the  fog  had 
delayed  the  rest  of  the  message,  which  should 
have  been  "Wellington  defeated  the  French  at 
Salamanca." 

But  the  era  of  electro-telegraphy  was  now  at 
hand,  and  a  means  was  about  to  be  adopted 
which  placed  all  the  laws  of  time  and  distance 
at  defiance.  As  far  back  as  1736  Stephen  Gray 
had  found  that  by  means  of  pack  threads,  more 


102          THE   STORY    OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

than  100  feet  in  length,  the  electric  current  could 
be  transmitted  to  a  considerable  distance. 

In  France,  two  other  experimenters,  Dufay 
and ,  Npllet,  *  sent  a  current  along  a  wet  cord 
i, 390^, feet. '  'Dr.  Watson  carried  a  wire  across 
the  Thames  at,  Westminster  Bridge,  one  end 
bjeirig.ir,  contact  with  a  charged  Leyden  jar,  the 
other  held  by  a  person  on  the  opposite  shore. 
Another  individual  was  placed  in  communication 
with  the  jar,  and  on  a  given  signal  both  dipped 
an  iron  rod  into  the  river,  whereupon  the  charge 
traveled  from  one  bank  to  the  other  by  means 
of  the  wire,  and  completed  the  circuit  by  return- 
ing through  the  water.  That  this  discovery  was 
of  a  most  important  character  it  is  not  neces- 
sary to  emphasize,  seeing  that  it  involved  the 
principle  governing  all  subsequent  experiments 
in  electrical  transmission  of  this  kind. 

Scarce  had  the  nature  of  this  new  and  most 
astounding  agency  become  known  before  it  was 
followed  in  various  quarters  by  proposals  to 
employ  it  in  the  conveyance  of  signals.  It  is 
related  that  as  early  as  1773  Odier  wrote  to  a 
lady  of  his  acquaintance:  :T  shall  amuse  you, 
perhaps,  in  telling  you  that  I  have  in  my  head 
certain  experiments  by  which  to  enter  into  con- 
versation with  the  Emperor  of  Mogul  or  of 
China,  the  English,  the  French,  or  any  other 
people  of  Europe,  in  a  way  that,  without  incon- 
veniencing yourself,  you  may  intercommunicate 
all  that  you  wish  at  a  distance  of  four  or  five 
thousand  leagues  in  less  than  half  an  hour !  Will 
that  suffice  you  for  glory?" 

This  vivacious  spirit  was  not  alone.     In  1774, 


THE   TELEGRAPH  103 

Lesage,  a  Frenchman  at  Geneva,  published  a 
plan  for  an  electric  telegraph.  He  proposed  to 
arrange  twenty-four  metal  wires  in  some  insu- 
lating substance,  each  connected  with  an  elec- 
trometer, from  which  a  pith  ball  was  suspended. 
On  exciting  the  wires  by  means  of  an  electrify- 
ing machine,  the  movements  of  the  twenty-four 
balls  represented  the  letters  of  the  alphabet. 

Under  date  of  September  16,  1787,  Arthur 
Young,  in  his  'Travels  in  France,"  remarks : 
'In  the  evening  to  Monsieur  Lamond,  a  very 
ingenious  and  inventive  mechanic.  In  electricity 
he  has  made  a  remarkable  discovery.  You 
write  two  or  three  words  on  paper ;  he  takes  it 
with  him  into  a  room  and  turns  a  machine  en- 
closed in  a  cylindrical  case,  at  the  top  of  which 
is  an  electrometer,  a  small,  fine  pith  ball ;  a  wire 
connects  with  a  similar  cylinder  and  electrome- 
ter in  a  distant  apartment ;  and  his  wife,  by  re- 
marking the  corresponding  motions  of  the  ball, 
writes  down  the  words  they  indicate. 
As  the  length  of  the  wire  makes  no  difference 
in  the  effect,  a  correspondence  might  be  carried 
on  at  any  distance  ;  within  or  without  a  besieged 
town,  for  instance  ;  or  for  a  purpose  much  more 
worthy,  and  a  thousand  times  more  harmless — 
between  two  lovers  prohibited  or  prevented 
from  any  better  connections."  Here,  then,  was 
a  complete  electric  telegraph  on  a  limited  scale, 
and  yet  years  wrere  to  elapse  before  it  was  put 
publicly  into  practical  effect. 

We  have  seen  that  Chappe's  invention  of  sig- 
nals was  adopted  instead,  and  probably  delayed 
the  discovery  or  employment  of  voltaic  elec- 
tricity. In  1796,  Salva,  a  Spanish  physician,  con- 


IO4         THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

structed  an  electric  telegraph,  which  was  made 
useful ;  and  soon  afterward  a  more  extensive 
attempt  was  made  by  Betancourt,  who  stretched 
wires  from  Aranjuez  to  Madrid,  forty-five  miles 
distant,  conveying  signals  by  the  discharge  of 
Leyden  jars.  But  nothing  really  came  of  these 
attempts,  because  the  experimenters  had  not 
yet  hit  upon  the  right  agency.  Frictional  elec- 
tricity and  galvanism  differ  in  many  ways ;  one 
will  leap  over  short  distances  and  is  uncertain, 
the  other  seems  to  require  a  continuous  con- 
ductor and  furnishes  a  steady  current.  Iron  can 
be  magnetized  by  galvanism,  but  not  by  elec- 
tricity. 

In  1816  Ronalds  sent  signals  by  frictional 
electricity  through  eight  miles  of  wire  at  Ham- 
mersmith. This  same  inventor  proposed  the 
adoption  of  an  electric  telegraph  to  the  Admi- 
ralty, and  in  a  volume  published  on  the  subject 
in  1823,  remarked  that  if  he  "should  be  proved 
competent,  why  should  not  our  kings  hold 
councils  at  Brighton  with  their  Ministers  in 
London  ?  Why  should  not  our  Government 
govern  at  Portsmouth  almost  as  promptly  as  at 
Downing  Street?  .  .  .  Let  there  be  elec- 
tric-conversation offices,  communicating  with 
each  other  all  over  the  kingdom." 

Without  pausing  to  trace  all  the  steps  of 
Arago  Soemmering,  of  Schweigger,  and  others, 
we  may  remark  that  at  last,  in  the  early  thirties, 
the  elements  of  modern  Telegraphy  were  ready 
for  some  master  mind  to  combine  in  a  single  in- 
vention. 

It  is  claimed  for  Professor  Morse,  an  Ameri- 
can, that  he  invented  the  first  electro-magnetic 


THE  TELEGRAPH  105 

telegraph  while   on   a   passage   from   Havre  to 
New  York  in  1832.     But  no  account  of  this  per- 


Prince  Albert 


ELECTRIC  TELEGRAPH, 

GT.VVESTERN  RAILWAY. 

The  Public  are  respectfully  informed  that  this 
interesting  &  most  extraordinary  Apparatus, 
by  which  upwards  of  SO  SIGNALS  can  be 
transmitted  to  a  Distance  of  280,000  MILES 
in  ONE  MINUTE, 

i  May  be  seen  in  operation,  daily,  (Sunday*  «xcepted,)  from  9  £11  8,  at  tie 

Office,  J*«ddinfft«m, 


•»  This  £xhtl>it»*  if  »*#  **»•<*£  a  rtsK  /TO»  ail  who  bvt  to  seeiht  vtondkrt 
oftcienee."  —  MOKHTSO  POST. 

Ife»p8tch»  instantaneously  sent  to  and  fro  with  tb«  most  confiding 
secrecj.  Past  Hors^  and  C<a»T«y»Bcea  of  every  description  may  b« 
ordered  by  the  ELECTRIC  TzusflBAPB:,  to  be  in  readineas  oo  the  arrival 
of  a-  Train,  at  «th«r  Paddington  or  Slough  Station, 

The  Terms  for  ^rding  a  Despatch,  orderiag  Post  Hones, 

&c.,  only  Oae  Shiiling, 

N.B,  Messengers  ia  coost«»*  '  a-tteodaaee,  so  tlurt  «>mtnro«Sc*ti<»« 
;r«ce*ved  by  Telegraph,  »o«l4  be  forssras«l«d,  if  required,  to  any  parr  of 
^  London,  Windsor,  J&OB*  *c. 

THOMAS  HOME, 


O.  KURTON,  Pv  -i  H  3«rtet,  PortiuAn  Market. 

Earliest  Advertisement  of  the  Electric  Telegraph. 

Queen  Victoria  made  use  of  the  \\ires  mentioned  in 
these  handbills  for  her  first  telegraphic  communication 
with  her  Ministers  in  London. 

formance  was  published  until  1837,  when  Schil 
ling,  Gauss  and  Weber,  Steinheil,  and  Wheat 


106          THE   STORY    OF   RAPID    TRANSIT 

stone  had  achieved  considerable  success  in  the 
construction  of  electric  telegraphs.  The  first 
message  by  the  Wheatstone-Cooke  system  was 
sent  between  the  Euston  and  Camden  Town 
stations  of  the  London  and  North-Western 
Railway  on  the  evening  of  July  5,  1837. 

Morse's  contrivance  included  a  marker  at  one 
end  of  a  wire,  which,  as  contact  was  made  or 
broken,  conveyed  an  arbitrary  alphabet  of  dots 
and  strokes,  representing  definite  characters. 
Wheatstone  (whose  first  patent  was  taken  out 
in  1837)  soon  made  improvements  which  greatly 
simplified  his  first  methods ;  the  number  of  wires 
was  reduced  to  two,  and  thirty  letters  could  be 
indicated  in  a  minute.  A  new  field  for  observa- 
tion was  opened  up  for  the  world  by  Wheat- 
stone.  He  showed  that  inasmuch  as  electricity 
traveled  at  a  speed  which  would  girdle  the  globe 
seven  or  eight  times  in  a  second,  it  could  be 
employed  in  measuring  the  rate  of  motion  of 
projectiles,  or  regulate  the  movement  of  all  the 
clocks  in  the  country.  With  the  proper  me- 
chanical accessories  a  "lady  seated  in  her  draw- 
ing-room in  London  might  play  Beethoven's 
sonatas  on  the  piano  of  her  friend  at  Edinburgh ; 
or  a  ringer  in  St.  Paul's  belfry  might  entertain 
the  frequenters  of  the  Parliament  Square  with 
a  lively  carillon  from  the  Tower  of  old  St. 
Giles's." 

The  first  example  of  the  commercial  applica- 
tion of  the  electric  telegraph  was  in  connection 
with  the  Blackwall  Railway,  opened  in  1840. 
The  announcements  of  departures,  of  stoppages, 
of  the  number  of  carriages  attached,  of  accidents 
or  causes  of  delay  were  regularly  transmitted  by 


THE   TELEGRAPH  IO? 

electro-magnetic  apparatus,  placed  at  each  of 
the  five  intermediate  stations. 

Two  years  later,  the  system  had  been  adopted 
on  the  London  and  North-Western,  South- 
western and  other  lines.  It  had  not  been  long 
completed  on  the  Great  Western  when  a  striking 
instance  occurred  of  the  service  which  the  new 
invention  was  to  render  to  society.  A  man  of 
respectable  exterior  took  his  seat  in  a  first-class 
carriage  at  Slough,  eighteen  miles  from  Pad- 
dington — he  was  a  murderer  fleeing  from  the 
yet  warm  body  of  his  victim.  The  hurrying 
engine  neared  the  terminus :  the  desperate  man 
felt  certain  of  his  escape ;  but  he  had  not  reck- 
oned on  the  speed  of  the  telegraph.  An  alarm 
had  been  given  at  the  scene  of  his  crime ;  quick 
as  a  flash  the  wires  bore  it  to  London,  describ- 
ing the  man's  flight  and  personal  appearance. 
In  three  minutes  an  answer  announced  the  ar- 
rival of  the  train,  the  identification  of  the  fugi- 
tive, and  the  certainty  of  his  capture. 

This,  and  other  similar  incidents,  naturally 
created  a  deep  impression  on  the  public  mind. 
On  the  birth  of  the  new  year  (1845)  a  telegram 
transmitted  from  Paddington  was  received  at 
Slough  before  the  old  year  had  expired,  there 
being  a  sufficient  difference  of  longitude  to  be 
marked  by  the  velocity  of  the  mysterious  new 
agent. 

We  are  now  so  accustomed  to  the  rapid  public 
record  of  passing  events  by  the  newspapers  as 
hardly  to  understand  the  patience  of  the  reading 
world  prior  to  the  era  of  the  telegraph. 

The  first  newspaper  report  received  by  wire 
appears  to  have  been  of  a  public  meeting  at 


IO8          THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

Portsmouth,  during  the  railway  mania  of  1845, 
which  created  such  interest  in  London  that  the 
Morning  Chronicle  printed  it  an  hour  or  so  after 
the  meeting  broke  up.  The  other  newspapers, 
receiving  their  reports  by  train,  which  took  three 
hours,  followed  the  example  the  next  day.  After 
this,  the  proprietors  of  a  Southampton  journal 
resolved  to  print  the  Queen's  speech  without 
waiting  for  the  railway.  The  report  was  trans- 
mitted, letter  by  letter,  and  the  3,600  letters  were 
set  up  in  type  in  Southampton  two  hours  after 
delivery  in  Parliament.  The  only  limit  now  was 
the  expense :  and  news  telegrams  accordingly 
began  to  appear  regularly  in  the  press. 

The  old  signaling  system  or  semaphore  still 
lingered  on  at  the  Admiralty  until  1848,  in  which 
year  the  new  electric  telegraph  was  substituted. 

Two  years  before  the  Electric  Telegraph  Com- 
pany had  been  incorporated,  with  a  central  estab- 
lishment in  Lothbury.  The  premises  were  amply 
equipped  with  all  the  necessaries  of  telegraph 
service ;  and  by  means  of  wires,  laid  in  tubes 
underground,  was  connected  with  all  metropoli- 
tan railway  stations,  the  Post  Office,  the  head 
police  station  in  Scotland  Yard,  the  Admiralty, 
the  New  .Houses  of  Parliament,  Buckingham 
Palace,  and  many  other  public  buildings.  In  ad- 
dition, communication  was  made  with  various 
places  in  the  Provinces,  including  the  chief  towns 
and  seaports.  "Electric  telegraphs,"  declared  the 
Parliamentary  statute,  "shall  be  open  for  the 
sending  and  receiving  of  messages  by  all  per- 
sons alike,  without  favor  or  preference,  subject 
to  a  prior  right  of  use  thereof  for  the  service  of 
Her  Majesty  and  for  the  purposes  of  the  Com- 


THE   TELEGRAPH 

pany."  A  proviso  is  also  made  in  favor  of  the 
Home  Secretary  of  State,  who  may,  on  extraor- 
dinary occasions,  take  possession  of  all  the  tele- 
graph stations  and  hold  them  for  a  week,  with 
power  to  continue  the  occupation,  should  the 
commonweal  demand  it.  There  were  established 
in  Edinburgh,  Manchester,  Liverpool,  Glasgow, 
Hull,  Newcastle,  and  other  towns,  subscription 
news  rooms,  for  the  accommodation  of  the  mer- 
cantile and  professional  interests,  to  which  was 
transmitted  by  electric  telegraph  the  latest  intelli- 
gence, including  domestic  and  foreign  news ; 
shipping  news ;  the  stock,  share,  corn  and  other 
markets;  parliamentary  intelligence;  London 
Gazette ;  state  of  the  wind  and  weather  from  nu- 
merous places  in  England ;  and  the  earliest  possi- 
ble news  of  all  important  occurrences.  Other 
companies  soon  followed,  to  the  number  of  seven 
or  eight ;  a  period  of  competition  set  in,  and  in 
1 86 1  the  United  Kingdom  Company  established 
shilling  telegrams,  without  reference  to  distance. 
For  some  years  this  charge — double  what  it  is 
at  present — was  found  unremunerative,  and  at 
length  an  agitation  sprang  up  for  the  acquisition 
of  the  whole  telegraph  system  by  the  Govern- 
ment. 

The  rise  of  electric  telegraphs  in  France  was  at 
first  remarkably  sluggish.  The  reason  for  this 
was  that  the  Government  had  spent  a  great  deal 
of  time  and  money  in  developing  their  system  of 
semaphore  telegraphs ;  and  even  when  they  were 
induced  to  avail  themselves  of  electricity,  it  was 
stipulated  that  the  signals  should  still  be  pro- 
duced by  small  instruments,  similar  in  principle 
and  construction  to  Chappe's  apparatus.  At 


IIO         THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

length,  however,  this  absurd  stipulation  was  with- 
drawn, instruments  and  equipments  similar  to 
those  in  use  in  England  were  acquired  by  the 
French  Government,  and  by  1847  telegraphs 
from  Paris  to  Orleans,  to  Rouen,  Lille  and  Calais 
were  brought  into  operation. 

A  curious  economical  advantage  resulting  from 
the  new  system  in  France  was  the  saving  of 
locomotive  power  on  the  railways ;  for  in  accor- 
dance with  the  practice  on  the  French  lines, 
whenever  a  train  was  twenty  minutes  late,  an 
auxiliary  engine  was  despatched  to  its  relief  from 
one  station  after  another  along  the  route.  By 
1850,  1,500  miles  of  telegraphs  were  complete 
and  in  progress  in  France. 

It  was  not  long  before  every  country  in  Europe 
began  gradually  to  feel  the  benefit  of  this  won- 
derful medium  of  communication.  Already  in 
1850,  the  ramifications  of  telegraphs  extended 
from  Calais  to  Moscow,  from  the  Baltic  to  the 
Mediterranean.  "Already,"  said  one  writer, 
"there  is  talk  of  introducing  the  thought-flasher 
into  that  land  of  wonders — Egypt ;  to  stretch  a 
wire  from  Cairo  to  Suez  for  the  service  of  the 
overland  mail.  Who  shall  say  that  before  the 
present  generation  passes  away,  Downing  Street 
may  not  be  placed  in  telegraphic  rapport  with 
Calcutta?" 

After  this  suggestion  appeared,  progress  was 
so  rapid  that  in  1861  Europe  boasted  100,000 
miles  of  telegraphic  wire;  and  in  1865,  Downing 
Street  actually  was  "placed  in  telegraphic  rapport 
with  Calcutta." 

In  the  United  States,  it  need  hardly  be  said,  the 
telegraph  was  from  the  first  most  extensively 


WIRELESS   TELEGRAPHY  III 

developed  and  applied.     The  lines  were  in  many 
cases     carried     across     country,     regardless     of 
traveled    highways,    over    tracts    of    sand    and 
swamp,  and  through  the  wild  primeval  wilder- 
ness.    "Away  it  stretches — the  metallic  indicator 
of    intellectual    supremacy,    traversing    regions 
haunted  by  the  rattlesnake  and  the  alligator — 
solitudes  that  re-echo  with  nocturnal  bowlings  of 
the  wolf  and  bear.''     Rapid  communication  was 
thus  made  possible  from  North  to  South,  East 
and  West,  through  all  the  length  and  breadth  of 
the  Republic  with  a  frequency  and  cheapness  long 
exceeding   any   other   nation.      This    superiority 
has,   since   the   establishment   of   sixpenny   tele- 
grams, been  transferred  to  the  United  Kingdom. 
And  now   we   come   to   telegraphing   without 
wires.     It  was  conjectured  by  Faraday,  Helm- 
holtz  and   others   that   light   from  the   sun  and 
electricity  were  of  the  same  order,  only  differing 
in  degree,  i.e.  in  the  lengths  of  their  respective 
waves.     Their  velocity   through  space   was   the 
same,   namely    186,400   miles   a   second.      Light 
waves,  heat  waves  and  electric  waves  in  traveling 
from  the  sun  to  the  earth— a  distance  so  great 
that   an  express  train   traveling  sixty  miles  an 
hour  would  take   175   years  to   accomplish   it — 
reach  our  earth  in  eight  minutes.     These  waves 
cannot  travel  along  nothing :  they  must  have  an 
elastic  medium  which  will  transmit  them.    If  the 
ether  be  capable  of  conveying  electrical  energy 
from  the  sun  without  loss  and  without  interven- 
ing wires,  it  was  reasonable  to  ask  :    Why  cannot 
some  form  of  instrument  be  devised  which  will 
also  send  out  along  the  terrestrial  ether  electrical 
currents,  even  in  a  small  way?     Air  must  not 


112          THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

be  confounded  with  ether.  One  set  of  vibrations 
may  concern,  perhaps,  thousands  of  waves  per 
second,  but  those  in  the  ether  are  reckoned  by 
hundreds  of  millions,  hundreds  and  even  thou- 
sands of  billions  per  second.  For  example,  if  in 
a  thunderstorm,  three  miles  distant,  we  see  a 
flash  of  lightning,  the  light  waves  in  the  ether 
reach  the  eye  at  practically  the  same  instant  the 
flash  occurred;  but  the  sound-waves  of  the  elec- 
trical discharge  traveling  through  air  travel  only 
1,150  feet  a  second,  and  so  would  not  reach  us  for 
fourteen  seconds.  In  this  time  the  electrical  cur- 
rent would  have  circumvolated  the  earth  at  least 
100  times.  Yet  although  there  is  such  a  wide 
difference  in  rapidity  between  the  air  and  ether 
waves,  yet  they  bear  so  much  resemblance  to  each 
other,  as  is  seen  in  practical  experiments  in 
syntony.  Every  musician  knows  that  if  a  violin 
and  a  piano  be  in  the  same  room  and  are  tuned 
to  each  other,  a  note  sounded  on  the  violin  will 
find  a  response  in  the  piano,  if  the  dampers  be 
raised  from  the  strings,  by  actuating  the  pedal. 
In  the  same  manner,  in  all  recent  experiments 
with  the  Hertzian  waves,  a  system  of  ''tuning" 
is  resorted  to,  in  order  to  establish  perfect  unison 
between  the  receiving  apparatus  and  the  trans- 
mitter. So  important  is  this  tuning  or  syritony 
between  waves 'that  the  privacy  of  messages  sent 
and  received  by  wireless  telegraphy  may  be  se- 
cured by  it. 

The  first  to  suggest  a  method  of  signaling 
across  space  without  intervening  wires  was  J.  B. 
Lindsay,  of  Dundee,  about  1853.  In  the  follow- 
ing year  he  patented  his  invention  and  conducted 
experiments  in  London  and  Portsmouth,  where 


WIRELESS   TELEGRAPHY  11$ 

he  successfully  telegraphed  without  wires  across 
500  yards  of  water.  After  a  lapse  of  thirty-four 
years,  in  1887-88,  other  experiments  were  made 
through  the  air  by  direction  of  Sir  W.  Preece, 
who  some  years  later  successfully  sent  messages 
across  a  distance  of  four  and  a  half  miles  by  the 
use  of  dynamic  electricity.  Static  electricity  was 
first  used  by  Hertz,  when  it  was  found  that  waves 
or  vibrations  passing  through  a  wire  set  up  simi- 
lar vibrations  in  the  other.  These  waves  vibrate 
in  all  directions,  and  by  very  delicate  receiving 
instruments  it  was  found  possible  to  gather  them 
up  in  sufficient  strength  to  repeat  their  pulsa- 
tions and  record  their  messages  from  the  trans- 
mitter. Mr.  Marconi,  a  young  Italian  inventor, 
has  been  experimenting  with  this  form  of  com- 
munication since  1890,  and  late  in  1902  achieved 
the  signal  success  of  telegraphing  without  wires 
across  the  Atlantic  from  Cape  Breton  to  Corn- 
wall, and  later  from  Cape  Cod  to  Poldhu,  in 
Cornwall,  a  distance  of  3,000  miles.  Other  suc- 
cessful systems  have  been  devised  by  Prof.  Slaby 
and  Count  d'Arco  in  Germany,  and  by  Dr.  Lee 
DeForest  in  the  United  States.  Thus  a  new 
method  of  rapid  communication,  destined  to  work 
mighty  changes  in  commerce  and  warfare,  has 
been  discovered. 

The  reality  of  the  new  science  may  thus  be 
illustrated:  The  S.S.  Umbria,  like  all  the  boats 
of  the  Cunard  line,  is  fitted  with  the  Marconi 
system  of  wireless  telegraphy.  She  set  out  from 
New  York  May  31,  1902,  and  was  soon  in  mid- 
ocean.  The  American  ambassador,  speaking  at 
a  concert  on  board,  could  only  express  a  hope 
that  on  landing,  the  news  of  the  conclusion  of 
8 


114         THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

war  in  South  Africa  might  be  imparted.  He 
reckoned  without  science.  Late  on  that  night  a 
Marconi  message  was  received  giving  the  news 
of  peace  and — the  winner  of  the  Derby !  It  has 
become  a  regular  experience  on  the  Atlantic 
boats,  at  whatever  distance  from  land,  to  see,  as 
in  a  London  club,  the  servants  carrying  round 
telegrams,  and  calling  the  name  of  the  recipients. 
The  lonely  sea  has  thus  lost  another  of  its  terrors. 


CHAPTER  VI 
AERIAL   NAVIGATION— HOMING   PIGEONS 

OF  all  forms  of  locomotion  the  palm  for  speed 
must  be  given  to  the  aerial  variety,  although  it 
is  true  that  as  a  reliable  means  of  rapid  transit 
aerial  navigation  has  advanced  scarcely  more  than 
a  single  step  since  the  invention  of  balloons  niore 
than  a  century  ago.  Yet  it  is  equally  true  that 
during  this  time  a  large  number  of  voyages 
through  the  air  have  been  successfully  carried 
out  by  intrepid  aeronauts.  These  certainly  serve 
to  show  how  great  will  be  the  boon  conferred 
on  mankind  when  some  means  of  guidance  of 
balloons  or  airships  is  discovered  which  will 
stand  all  tests.  Already  MM.  Krebs  and  Renard, 
and  Santos-Dumont  and  others  have  demon- 
strated that  it  is  possible  to  navigate  an  airship 
in  favorable  weather  in  precisely  the  direction 
desired ;  but  the  form  of  locomotion  can  never 
become  of  economic  value  until  the  safety  of  the 
machine  and  its  occupants  is  better  insured  than 
it  is  at  present. 


AERIAL  NAVIGATION 


i, 


Franklin   said   of   the   science    of  aerostation : 
It  is  an  infant,  but  it  will  grow." 

The  discoveries  and  inventions  relating  to  the 
uses  which  have  hitherto  been  made  of  the  atj 


An  Airship  Designed  by  Francis  Lana,  of 
Barcelona,  1760. 

mosphere  and  the  mathematical  deductions  which 
so  clearly  teach  us  to  hope  for  the  practicability 
of  aerial  navigation,  form  a  most  interesting 
story.  But  in  these  pages  we  must  confine  our- 
selves to  a  few  of  the  actual  achievements  of 
aeronauts  in  rapid  traveling  through  space. 
The  earliest  recorded  instance  appears  in  the 


Il6          THE   STORY    OF   RAPID    TRANSIT 

Ministre's  History  of  Lyons :  'Toward  the  end 
of  Charlemagne's  reign,  certain  persons  who 
lived  near  Mount  Pilate,  in  Switzerland,  know- 
ing by  what  means  pretended  sorcerers  traveled 
through  the  air,  resolved  to  try  the  experiment, 
and  compelled  some  poor  people  to  ascend  in  an 
aerostat.  This  descended  in  the  town  of  Lyons, 
where  they  were  immediately  hurried  to  prison, 
the  mob  desiring  their  death  as  sorcerers.  The 
judges  condemned  them  to  be  burned;  but  the 
Bishop  Agobard  suspended  the  execution,  and 
sent  for  them  to  his  palace  that  he  might  ques- 
tion them." 

When  the  good  prelate  had  heard  their  tale  of 
the  singular  manner  in  which  they  had  traveled 
so  far  in  so  incredibly  brief  space  of  time,  he 
pardoned  them,  although  himself  incredulous. 
Posterity,  which  reads  this  story,  may  likewise 
share  the  bishop's  incredulity.  Francis  Lana,  of 
Barcelona,  was  said  to  have  invented  an  aerial 
machine  in  1670,  but  it  failed  to  travel:  where- 
fore we  may  wisely  pass  over  a  host  of  similar 
relations,  as  well  as  all  the  aerostatic  experiments 
up  to  the  invention  of  the  balloon  by  the  brothers 
Montgolfier  in  1783. 

Nearly  ten  months  had  elapsed  since  this  first 
aerostatic  experiment,  when  a  young  chemist, 
Pilatre  de  Rozier,  offered  himself  as  the  first 
voyager  in  the  newly  invented  aerial  machine. 
The  first  to  make  an  aerial  voyage  (in  the  hori- 
zontal sense)  in  England  was  a  Neapolitan,  Vin- 
cent Lunardi,  on  September  15,  1784,  he 
traveled  from  the  Artillery  Ground,  Moorfields, 
to  Standon,  near  Ware,  Herts,  a  distance  of 
thirty  miles.  The  journey  was  not  remarkable 


The  First  Aerial  Voyage. 


IlS          THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

for  speed,  as  it  occupied  two  hours  and  a  quarter, 
including  a  stoppage  at  South  Minima.  'The 
departure  was  most  exciting."  "Perhaps,"  ob- 
served the  Morning  Post  of  the  following  day, 
"the  English  nation  never  witnessed  upon  any 
occasion  whatever  such  a  number  of  persons  col- 
lected together  and  so  loftily  displayed ;  not  a 
plain  or  an  eminence,  a  window  or  a  roof,  a  chim- 
ney or  a  steeple  but  were  prodigiously  thronged." 
Lunardi  became  a  popular  hero :  was  presented  to 
the  King,  and  made  a  honorary  member  of  sev- 
eral learned  societies. 

Four  days  later,  in  Paris,  the  brothers  Robert 
performed  a  journey  in  the  air  from  Paris  to 
Arras,  150  miles,  a  portion  of  the  trip  being  made 
at  the  rate  of  twenty-four  miles  an  hour.  This 
journey  is  remarkable  as  being  probably  the  fast- 
est ever  made  by  human  beings  for  such  a  dis- 
tance, up  to  that  era. 

But  this  record  of  speed  was  soon  to  be  broken. 
Sadler,  an  English  aeronaut,  ascended  from  Ox- 
ford on  October  I2th  of  the  same  year,  going 
fourteen  miles  in  forty-one  minutes,  descending, 
and,  after  considerable  delay,  proceeding  to 
Romsey,  in  Hampshire,  at  the  rate  of  twenty- 
nine  miles  an  hour. 

A  memorable  aerial  voyage — the  first  across 
the  English  Channel — took  place  January  7, 
1785.  Blanchard,  a  Frenchman,  and  Dr.  Jeffries, 
an  American,  pushed  off  in  a  balloon  from  the 
cliff  at  Dover  at  i  P.M.  The  weight  being  too 
great  for  the  power  of  the  balloon,  some  time 
was  consumed  in  discharging  ballast.  When 
they  rose,  they  continued  vertically,  so  that 
properly  the  journey  did  not  begin  until  half- 


AERIAL   NAVIGATION  119 

past  one.  Exactly  at  three  o'clock,  after  an 
exciting  voyage,  during  which  they  had  been 
obliged  to  throw  overboard  their  very  clothes, 
they  passed  over  the  high  ground  midway  be- 
tween Cape  Blanc  Nez  and  Calais.  They  de- 
scended in  the  Forest  of  Guines ;  the  freedom  of 
Calais  was  bestowed  upon  Blanchard,  and  a 
monument  erected  to  mark  the  spot  where  the 
pair  alighted. 

It  was  in  an  attempt  to  emulate  this  exploit 
that  a  few  months  later  Pilatre  de  Rozier  and  his 
friend  Romaine  lost  their  lives. 

The  maximum  of  speed  had  not  yet  been  at- 
tained—  and  Lunardi,  October  5,  1785,  was 
to  surpass  his  own  record  and  all  of  his  contem- 
poraries. Rising,  at  3.45  P.M.,  from  Heriot's 
Gardens,  Edinburgh,  he  says :  'The  city  of 
Glasgow  I  could  plainly  distinguish,  also  the 
town  of  Paisley,  and  both  shores  of  the  Forth ; 
but  my  attention  was  now  diverted  by  finding 
myself  immediately  over  the  Firth  of  Forth,  at 
an  altitude  of  2,000  feet.  ...  At  4.20  I 
descended  at  Ceres,  after  a  voyage  of  forty-six 
miles,  thirty-six  being  over  water,  and  was  con- 
veyed in  triumph  to  the  town  of  Cupar."  Thus 
Lunardi  had  accomplished  forty-six  miles  in 
thirty-five  minutes,  which  is  a  speed  almost 
equaling  the  fastest  that  has  ever  been  done  on 
a  railway.  A  longer  journey  was  subsequently 
done  by  Lunardi,  leaving  Glasgow  at  1.55  P.M., 
and  in  precisely  two  hours  arriving  at  Alemoor, 
Selkirkshire,  no  miles,  including  a  halt  of  some 
minutes  in  the  hills. 

A  voyage  notable  for  its  remarkable  rapidity 
was  executed  by  Garnerin,  June  28,  1802,  in 


120         THE   STORY   OF   RAPID    TRANSIT 

company  with  Captain  Snowdon,  R.N.  They 
departed  from  Chelsea  Gardens  and  came  down 
near  Colchester,  sixty  miles  in  forty-five  minutes. 
On  July  5th  Garnerin  ascended  from  Mary- 
lebone  and  descended  at  Chingford,  seventeen 
miles,  in  fifteen  minutes,  and  attained  also  during 
this  interval  a  height  of  7,800  feet. 

But  a  more  notable  voyage  was  to  be  made  by 
the  French  aeronaut  Garnerin,  in  the  balloon 
commemorating  the  coronation  of  Napoleon  I. 
At  ii  P.M.  on  December  16,  1804,  Garnerin 
allowed  his  colossal  machine  to  rise  from  the 
square  in  front  of  Notre  Dame,  Paris.  Twenty 
hours  later  it  had  passed  through  France  and 
Italy,  over  St.  Peter's  at  Rome  and  the  Vatican, 
to  descend  into  Lake  Bracciano.  It  had  traversed 
a  distance  of  800  miles.  The  coronation  balloon 
was  subsequently  suspended  in  a  corridor  of  the 
Vatican,  where  it  remained  until  1814. 

No  further  notable  aerial  voyages  are  record- 
ed until  October  7,  1811,  when  Sadler  and 
Burcham  left  Birmingham  at  2.20  P.M.  and  by 
4  P.M.  had  made  a  flight  of  112  miles.  They 
finally  alighted  near  Boston,  via  Leicester,  Mar- 
ket Deeping,  and  Peterborough. 

Sadler  was  the  first  to  attempt  to  cross  the 
Irish  Channel,  ascending  from  the  lawn  of  Bel- 
vedere House,  Dublin,  October  i,  1812,  and 
receiving  his  flag  from  the  Duke  of  Richmond. 
But  he  found  himself  precipitated  into  the  sea 
en  route,  the  feat  not  being  accomplished  until 
1817,  when  the  same  aeronaut's  son,  Windham 
Sadler,  traveled  from  Portobello  Barracks,  Dub- 
lin, at  i. 20  P.M'.  on  June  22d,  and  at  6.45  alighted 
a  mile  south  of  Holyhead. 


AERIAL   NAVIGATION  121 

Soon  after  this  the  famous  Charles  Green  be- 
gan his  long  series  of  intrepid  aerial  journeys, 
many  of  which  were  remarkable  for  distance  and 
speed.  One  of  these  was  undertaken  in  a  storm, 
from  Newbury,  Berkshire,  to  Crawley,  Surrey, 
fifty-eight  miles,  in  an  hour  and  a  half,  which 
was  rapid  time  for  1827,  considering  that  the  one 
railway  then  in  England  could  only  boast  of 
twenty  miles  an  hour.  But  by  far  the  greater 
portion  of  Green's  fame  must  rest  upon  his 
voyage  from  London  to  Weilburg  in  the  great 
Nassau  balloon.  This  took  place  in  1836,  the 
start  being  from  the  Vauxhall  Gardens  at  1.30 
P.M.,  November  I7th.  At  twelve  minutes  to 
three  the  Medway  was  crossed,  and  Canterbury 
at  five  minutes  past  four.  A  curious  circumstance 
is  that  the  aerostat  passed  several  coaches  en 
route,  going  at  the  fastest  rate  possible  and  was 
cheered  by  their  occupants.  The  railway  was  not 
then  opened,  and  the  fast  time  to  Canterbury  by 
coach  was  five  and  a  half  hours.  At  4.48,  Green 
(who  was  accompanied  by  Monck  Mason)  gained 
the  Channel,  and  at  ten  minutes  to  six  o'clock  had 
effected  a  crossing  in  safety,  two  miles  from 
Calais.  As  the  night  progressed  they  were,  of 
course,  totally  without  landmarks  and  so  could 
not  judge  of  their  speed.  "In  this  manner," 
writes  Mason,  "did  we  traverse  with  rapid  strides 
a  large  and  interesting  portion  of  the  European 
continent,  embracing  within  our  horizon  an  im- 
mense succession  of  towns  and  villages,  whereof 
those  which  occurred  during  the  earlier  part  of 
the  night,  the  presence  of  their  artificial  lights 
alone  enabled  us  to  distinguish." 

It  was  at  7.30  on  the  following  morning  that 


122          THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

the  descent  took  place,  so  that  the  duration  of  the 
voyage  was  exactly  eighteen  hours.  'The  first 
question,  'Where  are  we?'  was  speedily  answered, 
'In  the  Duchy  of  Nassau,  about  two  leagues  from 
the  town  of  Weilburg.'  The  second  was  theirs, 
'Where  do  you  come  from?'  'From  London, 
which  we  left  yesterday  morning.'  The  aston- 
ishment of  the  inhabitants  at  this  declaration  may 
be  imagined." 

To  reach  Weilburg  from  the  British  capital  in 
the  year  1836  by  the  fastest  coaches  and  steamer 
would  have  taken  three  days.  Green  and  Mason 
had  done  it  by  balloon — a  distance  of  more  than 
500  miles — in  eighteen  hours.  A  considerable 
portion  of  five  kingdoms,  England,  France,  Bel- 
gium, Prussia,  and  the  Duchy  of  Nassau;  a  long 
succession  of  cities,  including  London,  Rochester, 
Canterbury,  Dover,  Calais,  Cassel,  Ypres,  Cour- 
tray,  Lille,  Oudenarde,  Tournay,  Brussels,  with 
Waterloo  and  Jenmapes,  Namur,  Liege,  Spa  and 
Coblentz  were  all  brought  within  the  compass  of 
their  horizon.  When  one  reflects  on  the  smooth- 
ness of  the  traveling,  its  quiet  and  absence  of  dis- 
tracting apparatus,  we  may  safely  regard  this 
long  journey  as  an  ideal  transit  and  among  the 
most  remarkable  for  speed  which  ever  took  place 
prior  to  the  establishment  of  railways. 

In  June,  1841,  Wise,  an  American  aeronaut, 
set  out  from  Danville,  Pa.,  at  2.35  P.M.,  and  ar- 
rived at  Morgantown,  seventy  miles  distant,  at 
4.25,  having  in  reality  traveled  a  tortuous  course 
at  the  rate  of  fifty-five  miles  an  hour.  In  the  same 
year  Green  traveled  twenty  miles  in  twenty  min- 
utes from  Chelsea  to  Rainham,  Essex.  A  few 
years  later  Coxwell  traveled  through  the  air  from 


AERIAL  NAVIGATION  123 

Berlin  to  Dantzig,  170  miles,  in  three  hours  and 
ten  minutes. 

A  remarkable  instance  of  speed  in  aerial  transit 
was  afforded  in  1849  by  M.  Arban,  who  crossed 
the  Alps  from  Marseilles  to  Turin,  a  distance  of 
400  miles  in  eight  hours.  This  record  between 
the  two  cities  never  has  been  broken.  The  speed, 
however,  was  equaled  in  Coxwell's  journey  in 
1857  from  North  Woolwich  to  Tavistock,  Devon, 
250  miles,  in  five  hours.  "It  was  some  time  be- 
fore the  particulars  of  the  journey  obtained  cre- 
dence. At  Sidmouth  the  alarm-bell  was  rung 
by  the  night  watchman  ;  but  before  the  inhab- 
itants were  astir  the  balloon  was  out  of  sight 
and  the  man  laughed  at,  until  the  Devonshire 
papers  were  published  with  an  account  of  the 
voyage."  The  aeronauts  walked  into  the  town  of 
Tavistock,  and  put  up  at  the  Queen's  Hotel,  where 
they  had  difficulty  in  persuading  the  worthy  host 
that  they  had  been  in  London  the  night  before. 
A  shorter  journey  from  Winchester  to  Harrow, 
seventy-six  miles,  was  in  1862  accomplished  in 
sixty-six  minutes  by  Colonel  M 'Donald  and 
six  officers  of  the  Rifle  Depot  Battalion,  ac- 
companied by  Coxwell.  For  most  of  the  voy- 
age the  velocity  was  not  less  than  seventy 
miles  an  hour. 

We  now  come  to  one  of  the  most  celebrated  of 
modern  aerial  voyages,  that  of  Xadar's  "Geant" 
in  1863  from  Paris  to  Nienburg,  Hanover.  This 
famous  journey  was  preceded  by  a  brief  one  on 
October  4th,  in  which  no  fewer  than  fifteen 
persons  were  carried  in  the  monster  car.  The 
balloon  held  6,098  meters  of  gas  enclosed  in 
20,000  meters  of  silk,  and  was  the  largest  ever 


124          THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

constructed.  It  descended  on  this  occasion  two 
leagues  from  Neaux,  and  a  fortnight  later,  with 
nine  passengers,  reascended  at  5  P.M.  from  the 
Champ  de  Mars.  At  half-past  eight  it  was  over 
Compeigne,  seventy-eight  miles  from  Paris. 
Nothing  more  was  heard  of  the  balloon  until  a 
second  telegram  was  received  in  Paris  stating 
that  Nadar's  giant  balloon  passed  over  Erque- 
lines,  on  the  Belgian  frontier,  at  midnight  on 
Sunday.  The  airship  was  moving  not  far  from 
the  ground,  and  the  customs  officer  called  out  to 
know  if  there  was  anything  on  which  duty  should 
be  paid!  No  attention  was  paid  to  the  question, 
and  the  balloon  kept  on  its  way  toward  the  Ger- 
man frontier.  At  midnight  the  travelers  were 
over  Holland,  and  later  crossed  the  Zuyder  Zee. 
At  7.15  they  were  journeying  through  West- 
phalia, crossing  the  river  Ems,  and  at  length 
returning  to  Hanover,  a  little  above  Osnaburgh. 
The  balloon  was  on  its  way  toward  Hamburg 
and  the  Baltic  when  it  was  thought  wise  to  effect 
a  descent. 

The  descent  was  of  a  most  exciting  and  des- 
perate character,  for  the  wind  was  blowing  at  a 
high  rate,  and  the  balloon  was  moving  through 
the  air  at  sixty  miles  an  hour.  The  car  grazed  the 
earth  and  began  dragging  over  walls,  fences, 
houses,  stones,  and  ponds.  One  of  the  passen- 
gers, Jules  Godard,  then  tried  to  accomplish  an 
act  of  sublime  heroism.  He  clambered  up  into 
the  netting,  and  although  three  times  falling, 
reached  the  cord  of  the  valve,  opened  it,  and  the 
gas  having  a  way  of  escape  the  monster  ceased 
to  rise,  but  it  still  shot  along  in  a  horizontal  line 
with  prodigious  rapidity.  One  after  another  the 


AERIAL   NAVIGATION  12$ 

passengers  jumped,  not  without  injury,  from  the 
car,  and  soon  found  that  they  had  arrived  in  the 
vicinity  of  Rethern  in  Hanover.  In  seventeen 
hours  they  had  traveled  250  leagues,  while  for  a 
single  hour  they  had  sustained  a  speed  of  at  least 
ninety  miles. 

The  siege  of  Paris  offered  to  the  professors  of 
aerial  navigation  a  signal  opportunity  to  apply 
their  system. 

At  the  outbreak  of  the  Franco-Prussian  War  in 
July,  1870,  there  were  in  Paris  many  experienced 
aeronauts,  including  Tissandier,  de  Touvielle, 
Nadar,  Jules  Durouf  (about  whom  \ve  shall  speak 
later)  and  Eugene  Godard — who  had  made  no 
fewer  than  800  ascents.  The  subject  of  military 
ballooning  was  naturally  raised,  and  received  a 
lukewarm  support  from  the  Imperial  Govern- 
ment, which  wTas  far  too  disturbed  seriously  to 
consider  any  scientific  matter,  even  the  true  sci- 
ence of  the  commissariat  in  war-time.  Before  any- 
thing could  be  arranged,  there  came  the  disaster 
of  Sedan,  which  was  followed  in  a  few  days  by 
the  close  investment  of  Paris.  The  new  Govern- 
ment at  once  addressed  themselves  to  the  aero- 
nauts, with  a  view  to  opening  up  aerial  communi- 
cation with  the  exterior  country.  Six  balloons 
were  overhauled,  all  in  indifferent  condition,  the 
worst  being  the  one  Napoleon  III.  had  intended 
for  Solferino,  but  which  had  arrived  on  the  scene 
of  the  battle  a  day  too  late.  M.  Tissandier  tells  us 
that  nobody  seems  to  have  kno\vn  how  to  repair 
this  balloon,  known  as  U  Imperial.  However, 
they  were  all  got  together,  the  besieged  Parisians 
hailing  the  prospect  with  the  joy  of  children. 
Here  at  last  was  a  noteworthy  chance  of  putting 


126         THE   STORY    OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

into  execution  the  very  idea  for  which  Mont- 
golfier,  the  inventor  of  the  balloon,  had  really  in- 
tended his  invention. 

The  first  ascent  of  the  siege  was  made  by  M. 
Durouf  on  September  23d.  He  carried  a  large 
number  of  despatches,  and  after  a  three  hours' 
journey  landed  safely  near  Evreux.  He  was  fol- 
lowed on  the  2ist  by  M.  Mangin;  on  the  2Qth  by 
Godard,  jun.,  and  on  the  3Oth  by  Gaston  Tissan- 
dier,  who  has  given  us  a  spirited  account  of  his 
voyage. 

The  success  of  these  aeronauts  in  escaping 
from  the  capital  and  the  hands  of  the  Prussians 
encouraged  the  Government  to  establish  a  bal- 
loon post  on  a  regular  system.  Immediate  steps 
were  taken  for  the  manufacture  of  a  large  num- 
ber of  balloons,  under  specific  conditions,  as  rap- 
idly as  possible.  Making  the  vessels  proved,  how- 
ever, an  easier  task  than  finding  captains  for  them. 
Experienced  aeronauts  were  few,  and  it  must  be 
remembered  that  when  once  they  left  Paris  there 
was  no  returning.  That  was  the  radical  fault 
of  balloons;  one  could  not  elect  the  place  of  one's 
descent.  In  this  emergency  it  was  decided  to  in- 
vite the  assistance  of  such  sailors  as  there  were 
in  the  capital,  as  belonging  to  a  class  whose  train- 
ing had  rendered  them  familiar  with  operations 
and  dangers  not  dissimilar  from  ballooning.  The 
appeal  met  with  a  satisfactory  response;  many 
excellent  mariners  offered  their  services,  they 
were  given  all  possible  instructions  and  a  large 
number  of  successful  ascents  were  carried  out  by 
these  brave  French  tars.  The  remark  of  one  of 
them  deserves  to  be  memorable:  "Our  topsail  is 
high,  sir,  and  difficult  to  reef;  but  we  can  sail, 


AERIAL   NAVIGATION  1 27 

all  the  same,  and,  please  God,  we'll  arrive  in 
port." 

The  plan  of  employing  acrobats  from  the  Hip- 
podrome was  attended  with  less  success.  In  sev- 
eral instances  we  are  told  they  directed  their  skill, 
when  in  a  tight  place,  to  slipping  down  the  guide- 
rope  to  earth,  leaving  the  passengers  and  de- 
spatches to  look  after  themselves.  But  on  the 
whole  the  balloon  service  was  distinguished  by 
singular  ability  and  precision.  From  September 
to  January  sixty-four  balloons  were  sent  off,  and 
of  these  fifty-seven  fulfilled  their  mission,  and  the 
despatches  reached  their  destination.  The  total 
number  of  persons  who  left  Paris  was  155,  the 
weight  of  the  despatches  was  nine  tons,  and  the 
number  of  letters  3,000,000.  As  for  the  speed 
of  transit,  it  varied  from  twenty  to  fifty  miles  an 
hour,  and  in  one  instance  as  high  as  eighty  miles. 

•Gambetta  left  by  the  Armand  Barbcs  (every 
balloon  had  of  course  a  name)  on  October 
7th.  When  at  too  low  an  altitude  he  was  imme- 
diately fired  on  by  the  Prussians  and  narrowly 
escaped  being  hit  by  a  bullet. 

On  October  27th  the  Brctagnc  fell,  owing 
to  bad  management,  into  the  hands  of  the  enemy 
near  Verdun ;  on  November  4th  the  Galilee 
had  a  similar  fate  near  Chartres;  and  on  the  I2th 
the  Dagncrre  was  shot  at,  brought  down  and 
seized  a  few  leagues  from  Paris.  The  loss  of 
three  balloons  within  a  little  more  than  a  fort- 
night alarmed  the  Government.  It  was  obvious 
that  the  vigilance  of  the  enemy  had  been  aroused, 
and  whenever  a  balloon  was  seen  advices  were 
telegraphed  along  its  probable  line  of  flight,  and 
the  swiftest  Uhlans  were  put  on  the  alert  in  the 


128          THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

hope  of  capturing-  it.  The  danger  had  vastly  in- 
creased, since  a  new  rifled  gun  of  enormous  range 
had  been  made  by  Krupp  for  the  purpose  of  firing 
shells  at  the  aerial  transports.  One  of  these  was 
about  this  time  set  up  at  Versailles.  For  these 
reasons  the  Government  resolved  that  in  future 
balloon  departures  should  take  place  at  night. 
At  the  same  time  the  darkness  added  greatly  to 
the  difficulties  of  the  voyage,  and  several  of  these 
nocturnal  ascents  were  attended  with  singular 
adventures. 

About  midnight,  on  November  24th,  the 
Ville  d'Orleans  rose  from  Paris  with  an  aeronaut 
and  one  passenger.  The  wind  blew  from  the 
north  and  it  was  hoped  the  balloon  would  descend 
near  Tours.  But  in  a  short  time  the  voyagers 
heard  a  sound  below  them  which  caused  them 
both  deep  apprehension;  it  was  the  lashing  of 
breakers  on  the  shore.  At  the  time  of  this  dis- 
covery they  were  in  a  thick  mist;  when  at  day- 
break this  cleared  they  found  themselves  sus- 
pended over  the  sea,  out  of  sight  of  land.  Several 
vessels  were  perceived  and  to  these  they  tried  to 
signal,  but  were  not  answered.  One  vessel,  in- 
deed, responded;  but  it  was  by  firing  at  them. 
Scudding  now  rapidly  to  the  north  they  were 
giving  themselves  up  for  lost  when  they  came 
in  sight  of  land  to  the  eastward.  Before  they 
could  gain  it  they  descended  rapidly  from  loss  of 
gas,  their  ballast  being  gone  they  were  obliged 
in  despair  to  throw  out  a  bag  of  despatches.  This 
expedient  saved  them;  the  balloon  rose,  encoun- 
tering a  westerly  current  which  carried  them  to 
shore.  What  part  of  the  world  they  were  in  at 
their  descent  they  had  no  notion;  the  ground  was 


AERIAL   NAVIGATION  1 29 

covered  with  snow,  they  saw  no  inhabitants,  and 
being  overcome  with  fatigue  and  hunger,  both 
fainted  on  getting  out  of  the  car.  On  recovering 
they  walked  through  the  snow  with  great  exer- 
tion, and  after  a  painful  journey  of  several  hours 
passed  the  night  in  a  shed.  In  the  morning  a 
couple  of  woodmen  informed  them,  by  means  of 
signs  and  a  box  of  matches  marked  Christiania, 
that  they  were  in  Norway.  Their  speed  was  over 
fifty  miles  an  hour  for  a  number  of  hours. 

A  week  later,  on  November  3Oth,  two  fate- 
ful ascents  from  beleaguered  Paris  were  made. 
The  Jacquard  rose  at  n  P.M.  in  charge  of  a  sailor 
named  Prince,  whose  new-found  aeronautic  zeal 
was  so  great  that  as  the  ropes  parted  he  cried  out : 
'Je  veux  faire  un  immense  voyage;  on  parlera 
de  mon  ascension."  He  was  not,  alas,  to  be 
balked  of  his  ambition.  Driven  by  a  southeast- 
erly wind  he  passed  over  the  English  Channel, 
where  he  was  seen  by  some  English  vessels. 
While  over  the  vicinity  of  the  Lizard  he  dropped 
his  despatches,  some  of  which  were  aftenvard 
picked  up  on  the  rocks.  Thus  lightened  the  bal- 
loon rose  to  a  great  height,  disappeared  over  the 
Atlantic  billows  and  was  never  heard  of  again. 

The  second  balloon,  the  Jules  Fairc,  started  at 
half-past  eleven  writh  two  passengers.  Only  by  a 
miracle  did  it  escape  the  fate  of  the  Jacquard. 
The  wind  blew  from  the  north  and  the  aeronauts 
fancied  they  were  on  their  way  to  Lyons.  Long 
enveloped  in  fog,  they  emerged  at  daybreak  and 
saw  beneath  them  an  island  which  they  supposed 
to  be  in  a  river.  They  were  grossly  deceived; 
it  was  Hoedic,  in  the  Atlantic!  They  were  driv- 
ing furiously  out  to  sea;  but  in  front  of  them  lay, 
9 


I3O         THE    STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

as  a  forlorn  hope,  the  larger  island  of  Bell-Isle. 
It  was  seen  that  they  would  have  to  pass  one 
end  of  it  where  it  was  very  narrow,  and  that  they 
must  either  land  on  this  strip  of  land  or  be  lost. 
They  tore  the  valve  open  with  frantic  energy, 
caused  the  balloon  to  descend  some  1,000  feet  in 
a  few  minutes,  and  luckily  succeeded  in  striking 
the  land.  Albeit  the  shock  was  terrific;  three 
times  did  the  balloon  bound  into  the  air,  and  at 
last  caught  against  a  wall,  precipitating  the  occu- 
pants of  the  car  to  the  earth.  They  were  badly 
injured,  but  received  great  attention  from  the 
people  of  the  neighborhood.  The  father  of  Gen- 
eral Trochu  resided  there,  and  ordered  them  to 
be  brought  to  his  house. 

On  December  I5th  the  Villc  de  Paris  was  so 
unlucky  as  to  fall  at  Wertzlar,  in  Prussia;  and 
four  days  later  the  General  Chansy  was  made 
captive  at  Rothenburg,  in  Bavaria.  On  the  morn- 
ing of  January  28th  the  Richard  Wallace,  which 
rose  from  Paris  the  previous  night,  was  observed 
at  La  Rochelle  approaching  the  sea  and  almost 
touching  the  ground.  The  people  shouted  to 
the  aeronaut  to  descend,  but  instead  of  doing 
so,  he  threw  out  a  sack  of  ballast,  rose  to  a  great 
height  and  soon  disappeared  in  the  western  hori- 
zon. Doubtless,  the  poor  fellow  had  lost  his 
senses  on  seeing  the  danger  which  confronted 
him.  This  almost  completes  the  story  of  the 
ballooning  during  the  siege  of  Paris.  It  was  the 
last  ascent  but  one;  that  on  the  next  day  bore 
intelligence  to  the  provinces  of  the  conclusion  of 
an  armistice. 

These  aerial  voyages  had  solved  the  problem 
of  communication  from  Paris  outward.  The 


AERIAL  NAVIGATION  13! 

other  problem  of  communication  inward  from 
the  Provinces  was  hardly  less  important  and 
much  more  difficult.  It  required  a  particular  di- 
rection of  current,  and  although  M.  Tissandier 
made  several  attempts  he  failed,  and  the  return 
of  the  balloons  was  abandoned  as  impossible. 
Of  the  projects  which  were  offered  to  the  Gov- 
ernment to  encompass  the  desired  end,  some 
were  among  the  wildest  and  most  visionary  that 
ever  entered  the  brain  of  man.  One  balloon  took 
out  some  trained  dogs,  which,  it  was  hoped, 
would  find  their  way  back  again,  but  they  never 
reappeared. 

The  actual  method  by  which  the  difficulty 
was  solved  deserves,  we  think,  a  place  in  a  work 
dealing  with  modern  locomotion.  The  return 
post  was  effected  by  means  of  carrier  pigeons, 
which,  having  been  taken  out  of  Paris  in  bal- 
loons, were  let  loose  in  the  Provinces  to  find 
their  way  home.  There  existed  in  Paris  a  "So- 
ciete  Colombophile,"  and  after  the  departure  of 
the  first  balloon  the  leading  spirits  of  this  body 
approached  General  Trochu,  and  proposed  that 
an  attempt  should  be  made  to  combine  the  out- 
ward balloon  post  with  a  return  service  by 
pigeons.  The  second  balloon  carried  three 
birds,  which  came  safely  back  six  hours  later, 
with  news  from  the  aeronauts.  The  return  of 
eighteen  more  despatched  in  following  days 
confirmed  the  practicability  of  the  scheme. 
Thereupon,  the  service  was  regularly  organized 
and  was  carried  on  with  a  fair  amount  of  success 
throughout  the  investment  of  the  capital  by  the 
enemy.  As  the  despatches  were  required  to  be 
very  small  and  light,  recourse  was  had  to  mi- 


132          THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

croscopic  photography.  By  this  means  sixteen 
folio  pages  of  print  (32,000  words)  were  reduced 
to  a  pellicule  two  inches  long,  one  and  a  quarter 
inches  wide,  and  weighing  about  three-quarters 
of  a  grain !  The  messages  were  destined  for 
residents  of  Paris,  and  came  from  all  over 
France.  Here  are  a  few  samples : 

DEPECHES    A    DISTRIBUER   AUX   DESTINATAIRES. 

Pany  26  Janvier, — A  Tocher,  Rue  Chausee  d'Antin.  Ma- 
deleine accouche  heureusement  hier,  Bien  beau  gar$on. 

Biarritz,  i  Fevrier. — A.  Martin  68  Rue  Petites  Ecuries. 
Sommes  a  Biarritz,  bebe  completcment  remis,  embrasse  papa, 
doloureusement  impassiones  evenements. 

A.  Tant. — Besoin  d'argent,  demande  Masquier. 

A,  Perier. — Tout  parlaitement  bien;  trouverons  charbon 
dans  cave. 

Each  pigeon  carried  twenty  of  these  tiny  gel- 
atine leaves,  carefully  rolled  up  and  placed  in  a 
quill.  They  contained  sufficient  printed  matter 
to  fill  a  large  volume,  and  yet  the  weight  of 
the  whole  was  only  fifteen  grains.  When  the 
bird  arrived  at  his  cot  in  Paris,  his  precious  little 
bundle  was  taken  to  the  Government  office,  the 
quill  was  then  cut  open  and  the  gelatine  leaves 
extracted.  Placed  in  an  enlarging  optical  ap- 
paratus, similar  to  a  magic  lantern,  the  messages 
were  thrown  on  a  screen,  copied  from  thence, 
and  sent  to  their  destination.  The  charge  was 
fifty  centimes  a  word.  The  despatches  were  not 
entrusted  to  one  pigeon,  but  repeated  by  others, 
in  order  to  provide  against  accidents,  which 
were  very  common.  The  Prussians  were  pow- 
erless against  the  winged  messengers,  although 
an  attempt  was  made  to  chase  them  with  birds 


AERIAL  NAVIGATION  133 

of  prey ;  but  dense  fogs  and  severe  cold  played 
havoc  with  the  birds.  There  were  sent  out  of 
Paris  363  pigeons,  of  which  only  fifty-seven  re- 
turned, some  having  been  absent  a  long  time. 

Such  is  a  brief  narration  of  this  aerial  post. 
It  was,  beyond  question,  a  marked  success.  Al- 
though it  could  not  save  France  or  her  capital, 
yet  it  was  an  immense  boon  to  the  besieged,  for 
it  established,  during  the  whole  of  the  siege, 
that  communication  with  the  exterior  which 
would  otherwise  have  been  impossible.  Had  the 
cause  of  the  French  been  less  desperate,  the 
strategic  advantage  this  correspondence  would 
have  imparted  might  have  even  turned  the  scale 
against  the  enemy. 

This  suggests  to  us  a  reference  to  the  speed 
attained  by  pigeons  as  agents  of  rapid  transit. 

The  idea  that  fast  homing  pigeons  cover  a 
mile  a  minute  for  a  considerable  distance  must, 
like  the  tradition  that  Eclipse  once  accomplished 
that  feat,  be  finally  abandoned.  In  no  part  of 
Great  Britain  are  the  breeding  and  training  of 
these  birds  brought  to  greater  perfection  than 
at  Sheffield,  and  if  its  champions  cannot  travel  at 
the  pace  of  express  trains,  or  approaching  such 
speed,  it  is  not  probable  other  localities  are 
better  supplied.  In  a  competition  early  in  1902 
from  Banbury  to  Sheffield,  a  distance  of  ninety- 
two  miles,  nearly  300  birds  were  flown  with  a 
strong  wind  behind  them.  All  other  circum- 
stances being  propitious,  and  the  birds  being  se- 
lected for  speed  from  a  very  much  larger  num- 
ber, it  was  anticipated  that  the  winner's  time 
would  be  exceptionally  fast.  Whether  that  was 
the  case  is  not  recorded,  but  the  official  timing 


134 


THE  STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 


gave  the  leading  bird  an  average  velocity  of  only 
about  two-thirds  of  a  mile  per  minute,  with  sev- 
eral others  in  pretty  close  attendance.  Some 
time  was  lost,  no  doubt,  after  the  start  before 


Santos-Dumont  Rounding  the  Eiffel  Tower 
in  His  Airship. 

the  direct  line  for  home  was  hit  on,  and  also 
at  the  finish  before  alighting.  But  even  when 
full  allowance  is  made  for  these  delays,  it  does 
not  go  far  to  make  up  the  difference  between 
1,161  yards  and  1,760  yards  a  minute.  Still, 
since  very  few  of  the  birds  liberated  at  Banbury 
failed  to  arrive  at  their  destinations,  the  pigeon- 


AERIAL  NAVIGATION  135 

post  presents  the  additional  advantage  of  a  large 
degree  of  security.  We  have  seen  that  when 
several  of  these  birds  were  entrusted  in  war- 
time with  the  same  message,  some  were  sure  to 
reach  their  destination,  even  if  the  enemy  were 
ever  so  vigilant. 

Subsequent  developments  in  the  history  of 
aerial  navigation  are  speedily  narrated.  On  the 
conclusion  of  the  Franco-Prussian  War,  M.  Du- 
puy  de  Lome,  naval  architect  to  the  French 
Government,  produced  an  elongated  balloon, 
120  feet  in  length  and  fifty  feet  in  diameter,  con- 
taining 120,000  cubic  feet  of  hydrogen.  It  was 
actuated  by  a  screw  propeller,  and  with  it  the 
inventor  made  a  journey  of  some  ninety  miles, 
but  without  being  able  to  control  the  direction. 
Other  similarly  shaped  aerostats  (to  which  the 
name  airships  has  latterly  been  applied)  followed, 
until  in  1884  MM.  Krebs  and  Renard  of  the 
French  army  accomplished  for  the  first  time  a 
circular  voyage,  returning  from  the  point  of  de- 
parture after  a  considerable  aerial  flight.  They 
did  so,  however,  under  the  most  favorable  at- 
mospheric conditions,  the  car  was  of  great  light- 
ness and  the  electric  dynamo  operating  the  screw 
was  of  eight  horse-power.  Attempts  to  imitate 
this  feat  under  less  perfect  conditions  failed,  until 
in  1901  Alberto  Santos-Dumont,  a  young  Bra- 
zilian experimenter,  circumnavigated  the  Eiffel 
Tower  in  an  airship  of  his  own  construction. 
But  still  the  problem  of  a  dirigible  balloon  is 
far  from  being  solved,  and  adverse  climatic  con- 
ditions render  the  feat  a  highly  dangerous,  if  not 
an  impossible  one.  There  are  many  who  believe 
that  the  possibilities  of  the  balloon  have  been 


136          THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

exhausted,  and  that  the  future  locomotion 
through  the  air  will  only  be  made  possible  by 
flying  machines  constructed  on  the  kite  or  aero- 
plane principle. 


CHAPTER  VII 

OCEAN    TELEGRAPHY  —  THE    TELEPHONE 
PNEUMATIC   TUBES—  POSTAL   SYSTEMS 


restless  spirit  of  modern  invention,  not 
content  with  guiding  the  mysterious  power  of 
electricity,  both  above  and  beneath  the  surface 
of  the  earth,  proposes  next  to  join  the  shores 
of  England  and  France  by  means  of  a  submarine 
telegraph.  That  such  an  undertaking  is  possible 
there  is  but  little  doubt;  but  the  question  is, 
would  it  be  worth  while  to  attempt  to  carry  it 
out  ?"  The  author  of  the  foregoing  in  a  work 
on  Telegraphs,  published  in  1848,  decides  in  the 
negative,  for,  says  he,  "the  injuries  to  which  the 
wires  would  be  subject  appear  to  create  almost 
an  insuperable  objection  to  this  plan  being  car- 
ried out  on  a  large  scale." 

As  yet  we  have  seen  that  the  speediest  com- 
munication between  any  points  separated  by  the 
sea  was  by  means  of  the  fast  steamers,  which 
had  now  replaced  the  fast  sailing  ships  of  the 
beginning  of  the  century.  Dover  and  Calais,  as 
well  as  London  and  New  York,  were  solely  de- 
pendent on  steam  to  convey  at  the  most  rapid 
rate  tidings  upon  which  the  fate  of  nations  might 
hang. 

In  1845  an  American  newspaper  boldly  pre- 


OCEAN   TELEGRAPHY  137 

dieted  that  the  Atlantic  would  one  day  be 
spanned  by  an  electric  wire,  to  interchange 
thought  between  the  two  great  English-speak- 
ing nations.  The  idea  was  derided  as  extrava- 
gant, but  many  inventors  had  been  experiment- 
ing in  submarine  telegraphy,  and  in  1847  there 
came  the  actual  submarine  line  in  Portsmouth 
Harbor.  The  success  of  this  led  to  projects  for 
similar  wires  or  cables,  and  three  years  later,  on 
August  28th,  after  certain  preliminaries,  the 
GoliaJi  steamer  started  from  Dover  with  a  huge 
reel  on  her  deck,  containing  twenty-five  miles  of 
wire,  coated  with  gutta  percha,  which  was  slow- 
ly and  gradually  unwound  and  submerged  in  the 
water  of  the  Channel.  That  same  evening  a 
message  flashed  from  under  the  sea  to  the  horse- 
box which  served  as  a  temporary  office  on  the 
English  coast :  "We  are  all  safe  at  Cape  Grisnez : 
how  are  you?"  Thus  international  communica- 
tion by  electricity  was  achieved ;  and  although 
it  was  soon  interrupted  by  the  frailty  of  the 
cable,  which  broke  against  the  rocks,  yet  another 
year  saw  it  partake  of  a  solid  and  permanent 
character.  At  the  outset  the  new  method  of 
communication  was  only  used  for  the  trans- 
mission of  Stock  Exchange  intelligence ;  but  on 
November  21,  1851,  the  political  news  from 
Paris  published  by  the  Times  demonstrated  in 
striking  fashion  what  a  valuable  power  had  now 
been  developed. 

Private  messages  (at  a  fixed  rate  of  charge) 
began  to  be  sent,  and  early  in  1852  London  was 
placed  in  direct  telegraphic  communication  with 
nearly  all  the  chief  cities  of  the  Continent,  via 
this  single  cable.  Prior  to  this  year  the  an- 


138          THE   STORY   OF  RAPID   TRANSIT 

nouncement  of  the  death  of  a  monarch  or  prime 
minister,  the  overthrow  of  a  State  or  army, 
might  have  been  transmitted  under  exception- 
ally favorable  circumstances  from  the  English 
to  the  French  capital  by  means  of  the  signaling 
telegraph  in  a  comparatively  short  space  of  time 
— say,  in  a  few  hours.  But  to  the  public  gen- 
erally, and  for  the  despatch  of  messages  of  mere- 
ly private  moment,  the  only  agent  was  steam 
and  the  post,  and  this  agent  required  in  1850, 
21  hours  to  travel  between  London  and  Paris, 
52  hours  between  London  and  Berlin,  and  six 
days  between  London  and  St.  Petersburg.  In 
1853  a  private  message  from  Windsor  was  de- 
livered in  Paris  in  two  and  a  half  minutes. 

In  the  previous  year  Ireland  had  been  linked 
to  England  by  a  marine  cable  between  Holyhead 
and  Howth ;  submarine  cable  companies  began 
to  spring  up  in  all  directions  in  that  year,  and 
lines  were  soon  laid  in  great  number  all  over 
Europe,  even  as  far  as  the  Black  Sea  and  the 
Red  Sea.  Many  of  these  were  at  work  when 
the  magnificent  idea  presented  itself  of  a  cable 
across  the  vast  stretch  of  the  Atlantic  Ocean. 
Already,  in  1851,  a  plan  was  formed  for  connect- 
ing Newfoundland  and  the  Canadian  Maritime 
Provinces  with  America,  and  two  years  later  the 
work  was  begun.  Financial  difficulties,  how- 
ever, overtook  the  project,  and  it  was  not  until 
Mr.  Cyrus  W.  Field  lent  his  energy,  his  coun- 
sels, and  his  wealth  to  the  major  task  of  span- 
ning the  ocean  that  this  part  of  the  work  was 
completed. 

On  August  7,  1857,  the  two  ships  carry- 
ing the  great  Atlantic  cable  left  the  harbor  of 


OCEAN   TELEGRAPHY  139 

Valentia,  Ireland.  There  was  no  ship  in  the 
world  at  that  time  (for  the  Great  Eastern  was 
unfinished)  capable  of  carrying  the  whole  2,500 
miles  of  cable,  which  was  to  stretch  to  Trinity 
Bay,  Newfoundland.  The  British  Government, 
therefore,  lent  the  Agamemnon,  and  the  United 
States  Government  the  Niagara,  to  divide  the 
work.  The  shore-end  was  landed  and  received 
with  ceremony  by  the  Lord-Lieutenant  of  Ire- 
land on  the  Valentia  beach,  he  expatiating  on 
the  fervent  hope  of  establishing  "a  new  material 
link  between  the  Old  World  and  the  New." 
But  the  enterprise  was  destined  to  temporary 
failure :  the  cable  broke  and  the  ships  returned. 
After  a  disheartening  delay,  a  new  plan  was  de- 
cided upon.  The  two  ships  steamed  out  togeth- 
er into  mid-ocean,  where  the  two  cables  were 
spliced  and  submerged,  and  then  each  ship  be- 
gan steaming,  one  east  and  the  other  west.  But 
they  had  not  proceeded  far  when  the  cable 
snapped  again ;  again  it  was  spliced,  and  once 
more  wras  it  broken,  this  time  in  two  places. 
Thus  there  lay  at  the  bottom  of  the  ocean  144 
miles  of  cable  and  the  whole  rendered  worse 
than  useless.  Nevertheless,  the  projectors  were 
plucky  men ;  they  resolved  to  try  again,  and  the 
third  Atlantic  cable-laying  expedition  met  with 
success — a  temporary  success,  it  is  true — and 
the  first  lightning  message  sped  across  the  At- 
lantic on  August  6,  1858.  Ten  days  later 
Queen  Victoria  cabled  the  following  message, 
which  took  but  sixty-seven  minutes  in  trans- 
mission over  4,000  miles  from  London  to 
Washington : — 

"To  the  President  of  the  L^nited  States.    The 


ITY 


I4O         THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

Queen  desires  to  congratulate  the  President  on 
the  successful  completion  of  this  great  inter- 
national work,  in  which  the  Queen  has  taken  the 
deepest  interest. 

'The  Queen  is  convinced  that  the  President 
will  join  with  her  in  fervently  hoping  that  the 
electric  cable  which  now  connects  Great  Britain 
with  the  United  States,  will  prove  an  additional 
link  between  the  nations  whose  friendship  is 
founded  upon  their  common  interest  and  recip- 
rocal esteem. 

'The  Queen  has  much  pleasure  in  communi- 
cating with  the  President,  and  renewing  to  him 
her  wishes  for  the  prosperity  of  the  United 
States." 

President  Buchanan  replied  in  a  similar  spirit, 
declaring  that  the  new  enterprise  was  a  "triumph 
more  glorious,  because  far  more  useful  to  man- 
kind, than  was  ever  won  by  conqueror  on  the 
field  of  battle,"  and  trusting  that  "even  in  the 
midst  of  hostilities,  the  cable  would  be  regarded 
as  neutral  by  all  nations."  The  rejoicings  over 
the  cable  of  1858  were  great ;  but,  alas,  they  were 
speedily  cut  short.  The  electric  impulses  became 
weak,  and  gradually  failed  after  having  conveyed 
a  total  of  400  messages  between  the  two  hemi- 
spheres— the  last  word  transmitted  being — curi- 
ous to  tell — "Forward." 

For  five  years  following,  no  further  capital  was 
forthcoming  to  make  another  attempt.  But  in 
1865  a  company  was  organized ;  this  time  the 
cable  made  heavier,  and  the  whole  length,  2,300 
miles,  was  shipped  on  board  a  single  vessel,  the 
Great  Eastern.  Still  again,  when  the  vessel  was 
1,064  miles  from  Valentia,  the  cable  broke,  owing 


THE   TELEPHONE  HI 

to  an  accidental  strain,  and  after  a  futile  attempt 
to  recover  it  from  the  bottom  of  the  sea,  it  was 
abandoned  for  the  season.  In  the  following'  year, 
another  line  wras  at  last  successfully  laid  by  the 
Great  Eastern,  the  former  cable  recovered,  and 
thus  the  Old  World  and  the  New  were  perma- 
nently joined  together  in  an  intellectual  bond. 

Its  success  led  to  other  cable  systems.  In  1869 
a  French  company  laid  a  line  from  Brest  to  St. 
Pierre,  an  island  off  Newfoundland;  in  1873  a 
cable  was  laid  from  Lisbon  to  Pernambuco,  in 
South  America.  Two  other  Atlantic  cables  were 
laid  in  1874  and  1875  ;  and  several  others  since. 
The  Pacific  Ocean  had  to  wait  longer  for  a  cable. 
The  British  Pacific  cable  from  Vancouver,  Brit- 
ish Columbia,  to  Sydney,  Australia,  via  Fan- 
ning Island  and  the  Fijis,  was  opened  in  1902. 
The  new  cable  to  connect  San  Francisco  with 
Manila,  via  Hawaii,  the  Midway  Islands,  and 
Guam,  was  completed  as  far  as  Honolulu  in  De- 
cember of  the  same  year  and  will  be  opened  for 
service  before  the  end  of  1903,  bridging  the  vast 
expanse  between  North  America  and  Asia  and 
Australia,  thus  girdling  the  earth  with  ware. 

As  a  means  of  rapid  communication — rivaling 
even  the  telegraph — a  place  must  be  found  in 
these  pages  for  the  telephone,  whose  introduction 
into  Europe  dates  only  from  1877. 

The  idea  of  transmitting  sound  to  a  distance 
may  be  traced  back  to  remote  antiquity;  its  first 
practical  expression  was  found  in  the  speaking- 
tube,  and,  in  more  modern  times,  in  the  string 
telephone. 

In  1667  Robert  Hooke  relates  how  by  the  aid 
of  a  tightly  drawn  wire,  bent  in  many  angles, 


142         THE  STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

he  conveyed  sound  to  a  very  considerable  dis- 
tance. 

"  Tis  not  impossible,"  he  writes,  "to  hear  a 
whisper  at  a  furlongs  distance,  it  having  already 
been  done ;  and  perhaps  the  nature  of  the  thing 
would  not  make  it  more  impossible,  that  furlong 
should  be  ten  times  multiplied.  And  though 
some  famous  authors  have  affirmed  it  impossible 
to  hear  through  the  thinnest  plate  of  Muscovy 
glass ;  yet  I  know  a  way,  by  which  'tis  easy 
enough  to  hear  one  speak  through  a  wall  a  yard 
thick.  It  has  not  yet  been  thoroughly  examined 
how  far  Otacousticons  may  be  improved,  nor 
what  other  ways  there  may  be  of  quickening  our 
hearing,  or  conveying  sound  through  other  bodies 
than  the  air."  He  assures  the  reader  that  he  has 
"by  the  help  of  a  distended  wire  propagated  the 
sound  to  a  very  considerable  distance  in  an  in- 
stant." 

Again,  in  the  Repository  <of  Arts,  September 
i,  1821,  there  is  a  description  of  an  instrument 
invented  by  the  electrician,  Wheatstone,  and 
called  a  "telephone."  "Who  knows  but  by  this 
means  the  music  of  an  opera  performed  at  the 
King's  Theatre  may  ere  long  be  simultaneously 
enjoyed  at  Hanover  Square  Rooms,  the  City  of 
London  Tavern,  and  even  at  the  Horn's  Tavern 
at  Kennington,  the  sounds  traveling  like  gas 
through  snug  conductors  from  the  main  labora- 
tory of  harmony  in  the  Haymarket  to  distant 
parts  of  the  metropolis?  .  .  .  And  if  music 
be  capable  of  being  thus  conducted,  perhaps  words 
of  speech  may  be  susceptible  of  the  same  means 
of  propagation," 

Sixteen  years  later  Page,  an  American,  found 


THE   TELEPHONE  143 

that  a  magnetic  bar  would  emit  sounds  when  ex- 
posed to  rapid  alternate  magnetizations  and  de- 
magnetizations. By  rapidly  approaching  the 
poles  of  a  horseshoe  magnet  to  a  flat  spiral  coil 
traversed  by  a  current,  he  obtained  a  sound 
termed  the  "magnetic  tick."  De  la  Rive,  Gassiot, 
and  Marrian  remarked  the  same  phenomenon  in 
a  soft  iron  bar  surrounded  by  a  helix,  at  the  mo- 
ment that  this  helix  was  traversed  bv  a  current. 

•n* 

When  these  vibrations  become  frequently  inter- 
rupted, they  gave  rise  to  a  distinct  sound  of  con- 
siderable intensity,  and  when  the  interruptions 
were  sufficiently  rhythmic  and  rapid,  a  musical 
note  ensued. 

Charles  Bourseul,  a  Frenchman,  who  in  1854 
published  a  pamphlet  on  the  electric  transmission 
of  speech,  foresaw  clearly  to  what  all  this  would 
lead.  "Suppose,"  he  says,  "that  a  man  speaks 
near  a  movable  disk  sufficiently  pliable  to  lose 
none  of  the  vibrations  of  the  voice,  that  this  disk 
alternately  makes  and  breaks  the  currents  from 
a  battery,  you  may  have  at  a  distance  another 
disk  which  will  simultaneously  execute  the  same 
vibrations.  .  .  .  It  is  certain  that  in  the  more 
or  less  distant  future  speech  will  be  transmitted 
by  electricity." 

A  few  years  afterward  Philip  Reis  began  his 
experiments,  and  in  1868  actually  succeeded  in 
constructing  a  working  telephone  by  means  of 
the  galvanic  current.  It  was,  however,  princi- 
pally intended  to  reproduce  musical  sounds,  and 
although  it  did  convey  the  human  voice,  its 
powers  of  transmission  were  of  a  limited  order. 
Improvements  in  the  musical  telephone  were 
made  by  succeeding  inventors ;  but  it  was  not 


144         THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

until  1876,  when  Alexander  Graham  Bell  and 
Elisha  Gray,  working  separately  and  without  col- 
lusion, each  produced  a  speaking-  telephone,  that 
the  dream  of  articulating  telephone  became 
realized. 

Strange  to  relate,  both  inventors  applied  for 
patents  on  the  same  day,  February  I4th.  The 
question  of  priority  led  to  a  celebrated  law-suit, 
and  ended  in  a  compromise,  one  company  taking 
up  the  patents  of  both  inventors.  Bell,  however, 
had  made  important  developments  in  his  instru- 
ment, while  Gray  did  but  little  to  improve  his  in- 
vention after  applying  for  a  patent.  As  every 
one  is  aware,  a  telephone  consists  of  a  transmitter 
and  a  receiver,  the  former  being  the  instrument 
into  which  words  are  spoken,  the  latter  the  in- 
strument which  is  applied  to  the  ear.  The 
receiver  has  remained  virtually  the  same  as 
described  in  Bell's  patent,  but  this  is  not  the  case 
with  the  transmitter,  which  is  to-day  another 
device  altogether.  In  lieu  of  the  original  mag- 
netic telephone,  the  carbon  transmitter,  involving 
the  use  of  a  battery,  is  now  universally  employed. 
This  invention  is  due  to  Edison,  who  devised  it 
in  1877,  soon  after  the  first  Bell  telephone  was 
made.  It  was  subsequently  replaced  by  the 
microphone  of  Hughes. 

The  lines  used  for  telephone  purposes  are,  so 
far  as  erection,  interment  submersion,  and  mode 
of  insulation  are  concerned,  about  the  same  as 
ordinary  telegraphs.  The  vast  superiority  of 
copper  wire  to  iron  for  long  circuits  is  shown  by 
the  fact  that  Rysselburg  and  others  have  spoken 
clearly  to  a  distance  of  over  1,000  miles  through 
a  copper  wire  insulated  on  poles,  whereas  Preece 


PNEUMATIC   TUBES  145 

could  not  work  a  similar  line  of  iron  wire  between 
London  and  Manchester. 

Telephones  are  now  in  every  city  in  the  \vorld, 
and  have  in  many  become  a  necessity  of  daily 
life,  on  its  social  as  well  as  on  its  economic  side. 

The  new  Government  telephone  system  was 
inaugurated  in  London  in  1902. 

Another  form  of  rapid  despatch  controlled  by 
the  Post  Office,  from  which  great  results  in  the 
carriage  of  human  freight  is  still  sometimes  an- 
ticipated, is  that  of  the  pneumatic  tube.  The 
transport  of  written  messages  by  the  agency  of 
air-pressure  was  introduced  in  1853  by  Latimer 
Clark  between  the  Central  and  Stock  Exchange 
telegraph  stations  in  London.  These  stations 
were  connected  by  a  tube  one  and  one-half 
inches  in  diameter  and  220  yards  long.  Re- 
ceptacles containing  batches  of  telegrams,  getting 
piston-wise  in  the  tube,  were  sucked  through  it 
by  the  production  of  a  partial  vacuum  at  one  end. 
In  1858  Varley  introduced  compressed  air  to  be 
used  in  conjunction  with  the  vacuum  principle 
for  the  purpose  of  returning  messages  along  the 
same  tube.  The  system  grew  in  the  hands  of  the 
Post  Office,  until  there  are  now  in  London  alone 
some  forty  miles  of  pneumatic  tubes.  In  addi- 
tion to  its  use  for  postal  and  telegraphic  purposes, 
the  pneumatic  despatch  is  considerably  employed 
for  internal  communication  in  offices,  hotels,  etc., 
and  also  in  shops  for  the  transport  of  money  and 
bills  between  the  cashier's  desk  and  the  counters. 
As  to  the  time  taken  in  transit,  an  ordinary 
"carrier"  weighs  two  and  three-quarter  ounces 
and  holds  about  a  dozen  despatches.  With  a 
pressure  of  ten  pounds  per  square  inch,  or  a 
10 


146         THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

vacuum  of  seven  pounds,  one  minute  is  required 
for  a  length  of  1,000  yards,  and  five  and  one-half 
minutes  for  a  length  of  3,000  yards.  In  Paris, 
where  the  pneumatic  system  dates  from  1866, 
large  areas  of  the  city  have  been  covered  by 
pneumatic  circuits  made  up  of  iron  pipes,  round 
which  long  trains  of  "carriers"  are  despatched  at 
intervals  of  fifteen  minutes.  A  similar  arrange- 
ment is  also  followed  in  Berlin  and  Vienna  and 
in  the  cities  of  the  United  States.  Notwithstand- 
ing all  the  developments  which  have  taken  place, 
however,  in  other  departments  of  rapid  locomo- 
tion, the  pneumatic  despatch  has  made  com- 
paratively few  strides,  and  the  application  of  its 
principle  on  a  large  scale  is  a  problem  for  the 
future. 

Before  concluding  this  chapter  it  may  be  worth 
while  to  glance  back  at  the  conditions  which 
formerly  obtained  at  the  Post  Office. 

Under  the  postal  regime  of  1820  it  took  as 
long  a  time  to  convey  a  letter  from  Kingsland  to 
Camberwell,  a  distance  of  only  five  miles,  as  some 
twenty  years  later  sufficed  for  its  transmission 
from  the  Scottish  to  the  English  capital. 

The  mails  were  first  sent  by  the  railway  on 
November  n,  1830;  as  the  railways  extended 
the  Post  Office  authorities  lost  no  time  in  avail- 
ing themselves  of  the  means  which  railways 
offer  for  expediting  the  transmission  of  letters. 

Before  the  morning  mails  were  established  a 
letter  from  Brighton  for  a  town  in  Yorkshire  was 
stopped  fourteen  hours  in  London,  as  it  could  not 
have  been  transmitted  until  eight  o'clock  at  night ; 
but  it  now  reaches  its  destination  (200  miles,  say, 
from  London)  several  hours  before  it  would 


POSTAL   SYSTEMS  147 

formerly  have  left  the  Post  Office  ;  again,  the 
Liverpool  merchant  receives  his  foreign  letters 
on  the  same  day  that  they  reach  London,  instead 
of  thirty  hours  afterward. 

The  traveling  or  railway  post-office,  invented 
by  Earle,  has  been  adopted  by  every  important 
country  in  the  world. 

As  to  the  special  character  of  the  modern  postal 
system  with  reference  to  the  saving  of  time,  it 
is  now  possible  to  post  a  letter  in  a  letter-box  in 
all  mail  trains,  to  have  it  sorted  in  the  train  and 
delivered  at  its  respective  town  while  the  train  is 
in  motion.  The  postman  has  merely  to  re-sort  it 
at  its  proper  street  and  slip  it  in  the  letter-box 
of  its  destined  recipient. 

Railways  carrying  the  mails  are  obliged  to 
observe  the  greatest  punctuality.  Very  heavy 
fines  are  imposed  upon  them  if  they  are  late ;  and 
it  is  the  same  with  the  mail-boats.  Government 
stipulates  that  the  duration  of  the  Channel  voyage 
shall  not  exceed  two  hours  and  five  minutes  be- 
tween the  Admiralty  Pier  at  Dover  and  the  Jetty 
at  Calais.  But  inasmuch  as  this  journey  is  fre- 
quently done  under  an  hour,  it  will  be  seen  that 
considerable  margin  is  allowed  for  these  days  of 
speed. 

The  Post  Office  department  of  the  United 
States  is  responsible  for  much  of  the  quickening 
of  the  railway  trains,  which  during  the  last  ten 
years  or  so  has  become  a  prominent  feature  of 
American  railways.  The  mail  contract  is  given 
to  the  railway  which  undertakes  to  convey  the 
letters  between  given  points  in  the  quickest  time. 
Such  lucrative  traffic  naturally  causes  the  com- 
peting lines  to  accelerate  their  service. 


148          THE   STORY   OF   RAPID    TRANSIT 

CHAPTER   VIII 
THE   BICYCLE— MOTOR   CYCLES 

WHEN  we  consider  that  it  is  possible  for  a 
human  animal  to  propel  himself  on  a  pair  of 
wheels  without  the  aid  of  steam,  electricity,  or 
any  other  agent  but  his  own  muscular  power, 
along  the  earth's  surface  at  the  rate  of  forty-one 
miles  an  hour,  it  is  clear  that  in  the  bicycle  man- 
kind possesses  extraordinary  means  of  rapid 
transit. 

Such  a  means  in  the  eighteenth  century  and 
the  first  thirty  years  of  the  nineteenth  would  of 
itself  have  revolutionized  the  mails  and  despatch 
carrying  system ;  but  its  invention,  or  rather  de- 
velopment, being  reserved  until  the  era  of  rail- 
ways, of  telegraphs,  and  even  of  telephones,  the 
economic  value  of  the  bicycle  has  been  greatly 
lessened.  Yet  it  is  not  a  mere  instrument  of  sport 
and  exercise ;  although  even  in  that  character  the 
benefit  it  confers  upon  mankind  is  enormous ;  it  is 
everywhere,  in  nearly  all  civilized  countries,  an 
important  convenience,  offering  facilities  for 
transit  far  superior  to  the  horse,  and  hardly  in- 
ferior to  the  road  motor,  besides  doing  without 
the  latter 's  cost,  complexity  and  disadvantages. 

The  modern  cycle  is  the  lineal  descendant  of 
the  "dandy"  or  "hobby-horse"  of  the  early  years 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  which  is  to  be  found 
caricatured  in  countless  prints  of  that  epoch.  It 
was  a  bicycle  with  wheels  attached  to  a  bar  of 
wood  rudely  shaped  like  the  body  of  a  horse,  the 


THE   BICYCLE 


149 


rider  sitting  astride  it  and  propelling  it  with  his 
feet  upon  the  ground.  In  1819  the  Baron  Drais 
de  Saverbrunn  constructed  an  improved  hobby- 
horse, and  this  was  introduced  into  England 
under  the  name  of  the  "cclerifcre"  It  consisted 
of  two  stout  equal-sized  wooden  wheels  held  in 
iron  forks,  the  rear  fork  being  securely  bolted  to 
a  bar  of  wood,  the  "perch";  the  front  fork  passed 


The  "Dandy-horse." 

through  the  perch,  and  was  so  arranged  that  it 
could  be  turned  by  a  handle,  thereby  steering  the 
machine  after  the  manner  of  a  modern  bicycle. 
In  the  middle  of  the  perch  was  placed  a  cushion 
on  which  the  rider  sat ;  in  front  of  this  was 
another  and  smaller  cushion  elevated  on  a  bracket, 


150         THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

upon  which  he  leaned  his  chest.  When  the  rider 
was  seated  astride  the  "celerifere"  his  feet  just 
touched  the  ground ;  the  machine  was  propelled 
by  running  with  long  strides,  which  furnished 
the  momentum  during  which  the  rider  rested  from 
his  efforts.  Down  hill  he  could,  of  course,  and 
did,  proceed  at  a  breakneck  pace.  None  of  these 
early  "dandy-horses"  were  fitted  with  any  sort 
of  brake,  they  were  heavily  built,  and  must  have 
rushed  down  an  incline  at  a  startling  and  danger- 
ous speed.  Yet,  dangerous  and  ungraceful  as 
the  pastime  was,  it  attained  great  popularity ;  no 
young  beau's  equipment  was  considered  complete 
without  a  hobby-horse ;  and  although  they  were 
publicly  ridiculed,  hobby-riding  lasted  for  several 
memorable  seasons  until,  indeed,  several  acci- 
dents damped  general  enthusiasm  for  the  sport. 
One  wit  described  its  votaries  as  gentlemen  who 
rode  in  their  own  carriages  and  walked  in  the 
mud  at  the  same  time.  In  one  caricature,  the 
blacksmiths  of  a  posting  village  are  seen  chasing 
the  hobby-riders,  upsetting  them  and  smashing 
their  machines  to  fragments  with  hammers,  be- 
cause, forsooth,  the  hobby-horse,  whose  use 
threatened  to  become  general,  never  required  to 
be  shod. 

In  1824  there  appeared  the  following  adver- 
tisement in  the  Mechanic 's  Magazine  :- 

"SELF-MOVING  CARRIAGE. 

"Mr.  D.  M'Donald,  of  Sunderland,  informs  us 
that  he  has  invented  a  self-moving  machine  for 
traveling  on  roads,  which  has  carried  seven  per- 
sons. It  is  propelled  by  means  of  treadles.  A 
man  sits  behind  working  the  same,  and  there  is  a 


THE   BICYCLE  151 

fly-wheel  operating  upon  two  cog-wheels  which 
operate  on  a  square  axle.  You  will  perhaps  think 
the  man  behind  has  hard  labor — not  so.  From 
the  velocity  of  the  fly-wheel,  together  with  the  aid 
of  a  lever,  which  is  in  the  hand  of  a  person  in 
front  steering,  he  has  not  often  to  put  his  feet  to 
the  treadles.  Mr.  M'Donald  intends,  when  he 
shall  have  improved  the  friction  of  the  body  of 
the  carriage,  to  present  the  same  to  the  Society  of 
Arts ;  and  as  he  desires  to  receive  no  emolument 
for  the  same,  he  hopes  it  will  come  into  general 


use.' 


In  the  same  year  there  is  recorded  another  ex- 
ample of  these  so-called  "self-moving  carriages" 
invented  by  a  carpenter  of  Buckland,  and  another, 
a  Welshman,  describes  a  lever-action  machine, 
which  accommodated  three  persons,  and  "went 
with  ease  eight  miles  an  hour."  All  of  these  self- 
moving  carriages  were  to  be  propelled  by  levers. 
'Velocipedes/'  or  "carriages  to  go  without 
horses,"  "manivelociters,"  "bivectors,"  "tri- 
vectors,"  "accelerators,"  "allepodes"  are  among 
the  names  of  machines  brought  forth  in  the 
course  of  the  next  forty  years. 

Yet,  although  the  hobby-horse  gradually  dis- 
appeared from  fashionable  circles,  it  had  shown 
that  even  along  an  ordinary  road  it  could  go 
faster  than  a  man  could  run,  and  for  a  much 
longer  period.  In  1830  we  learn  that  certain  "im- 
proved dandy-horses  were  supplied  to  the  post- 
men in  a  rural  district,  where  they  were  used  for 
many  years."  But  not  being  replaced  when  they 
wore  out  (except  by  the  railway),  the  postmen 
had  once  again  to  trudge  on  foot. 


152          THE   STORY   OF  RAPID   TRANSIT 

Ten  years  later,  Kirkpatrick  M'Millan,  a 
Scotchman,  made  a  wooden  bicycle  with  cranks, 
side  levers,  connecting  rods,  and  pedals.  It  was 
used  with  considerable  success  for  years,  and  to 
its  inventor,  therefore,  would  seem  to  belong  the 
honor  of  making  the  first  bicycle  with  cranks. 
Previously,  M'Millan  had  tried  his  cranks  and 
side  levers  on  a  tricycle  in  1835.  After  him  came 
Gavin  Dalzell,  a  Lanarkshire  cooper,  with  a 
crank-driven  bicycle;  and  in  1862,  Messrs.  May- 
hew,  of  Chelsea,  exhibited  a  three-wheel  veloci- 
pede, the  front  wheel  steering  as  in  a  modern 
bicycle  or  the  old  hobby-horse,  the  other  two 
smaller  wheels  being  placed  together  behind.  A 
pair  of  cranks  was  fitted  to  the  front  wheel,  and 
on  this  velocipede  it  was  possible  to  attain  a  speed 
of  over  ten  miles  an  hour  on  a  smooth  track.  Four 
years  later,  the  firm  of  Michaux,  in  Paris,  sent 
over  to  England  a  perfected  bicycle,  which,  in 
spite  of  its  weight  and  clumsiness  as  compared 
with  the  modern  machine,  seemed  then  a  miracle 
of  grace  and  lightness.  Several  of  these  machines 
found  their  way  to  the  London  gymnasiums,  and 
became  a  popular  form  of  sport  on  a  smooth 
track.  One  of  the  earliest  long  journeys  taken 
in  England  was  by  Mr.  Mayall,  the  photog- 
rapher, who  mastered  the  machine  sufficiently 
to  ride  from  London  to  Redhill,  in  an  attempt  to 
reach  Brighton ;  "he  returned  from  Redhill  by 
train,  exhausted,  and  covered  with  dust  and 
glory."  It  was  only  a  few  months  before  that 
Mayall  had  seen  his  first  bicycle  at  Spencer's 
gymnasium.  'The  gymnasium  was  cleared,"  he 
writes,  "Mr.  Turner  took  off  his  coat,  grasped 
the  handles  of  the  machine,  and  with  a  short  run, 


THE   BICYCLE  I  53 

and  to  my  intense  surprise,  vaulted  on  to  it,  and 
putting  his  feet  on  the  treadles,  made  the  circuit 
of  the  room.  We  were  some  half-dozen  specta- 
tors, and  I  shall  never  forget  our  astonishment 
at  the  sight  of  Mr.  Turner  whirling  himself  round 
the  room,  sitting  on  a  bar  above  a  pair  of  wheels 
in  a  line  that  ought,  as  we  innocently  supposed, 
to  fall  down  immediately  he  jumped  off  the 
ground." 

It  must  be  remembered  that  up  to  that  period 
the  possibility  of  remaining  upright  on  two 
wheels,  arranged  bicycle-wise,  was  not  generally 
admitted. 

In  a  short  time,  certain  English  manufacturers 
began  to  perceive  that  this  so-called  toy  had  a 
future :  the  French  machines  ceased  to  be  im- 
ported, owing  to  the  improvements  which  were 
made,  and  soon  the  manufacture  of  bicycles  was 
proceeding  on  a  large  scale  at  Coventry.  The 
changes  in  structure  introduced  greater  lightness 
and  consequently  greater  speed :  the  sport  took 
hold  of  the  public,  and  bicycles  were  encountered 
on  every  leading  road.  Those  who  believed  in 
its  ephemeral  character,  and  predicted  its  early 
relegation  to  obscurity,  were  destined  to  see  the 
error  of  their  ways.  It  was  found  that  the  new 
machine  could  carry  a  man  forty,  or  fifty,  and  even 
sixty  miles  a  day,  with  less  exertion  than  he 
could  walk  half  the  distance.  In  1869  Mayall 
started  for  Brighton  at  8  A.M.  and  arrived  at  the 
Old  Ship  at  tea-time.  The  head-porter,  who  had 
never  seen  a  bicycle,  was  puzzled  about  the  train 
the  new  arrival  had  come  by.  He  was  told  that 
no  train  had  brought  him. 

"Did   you    drive   or   ride   a  horse?    Did   you 


154          THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

walk?"  were  next  asked.  "No,"  was  the  reply, 
"I  came  down  on  those  two  wheels  yonder  in 
the  corner :  and  if  you  live  long  enough  you  will 
see  thousands  of  others  which  will  carry  travelers 
to  Brighton  in  half  the  time  it  took  me  to  come." 

In  1894  Mr.  Wridgway  traveled  to  Brighton 
from  London  and  back  again  in  just  a  little  more 
than  five  and  a  half  hours. 

In  June,  1873,  it  was  decided  to  test  the  new 
machine  by  a  ride  from  London  to  John  o' 
Groat's,  the  most  northerly  point  of  the  kingdom. 
Four  tourists,  Messrs.  Spencer,  Hunt,  Leaver, 
and  Wood,  took  part  in  this  long-distance  ride, 
on  machines  which,  although  of  the  most  im- 
proved type  in  1873,  have  little  resemblance  to  the 
Coventry  productions  of  to-day.  The  four  were 
escorted  for  a  few  miles  of  their  way  by  friends, 
but  soon  distanced  their  escorts,  and  that  evening 
the  message  came  to  London  that  they  had 
reached  Buckden,  sixty-five  miles  away.  On  the 
second  day  they  reached  Newark,  thus  achieving 
forty-three  miles.  On  the  ninth  day  they  gained 
Edinburgh,  and  the  fifteenth  day  saw  the  party 
safely  landed  at  John  o'  Groat's,  86 1  miles. 
This  was  the  first  long-distance  ride  on  record, 
and  attracted  a  great  deal  of  attention ;  for 
it  brought  home  forcibly  that  a  new  factor  of 
speed  had  been  introduced,  which,  although 
inferior  to  the  railway,  yet  was  inferior  to  it 
alone.  How  amazed  even  the  riders  would  have 
been  to  know  that  twenty-one  years  later  the  dis- 
tance between  London  and  Edinburgh  would  have 
been  covered  on  a  bicycle  in  twenty-eight  hours. 
Yet  it  was  not  long  after  their  exploit  that 
H.  S.  Tharp  rode  from  London  to  York  in 


THE   BICYCLE  155 

twenty-two  and  a  half  hours.  In  1876  Smythe 
and  Caston  rode  205  miles  in  twenty-two  hours, 
the  actual  time  in  the  saddle  being  seventeen 
hours  seventeen  minutes.  Apropos  of  Tharp's 
performance  we  may  compare  it  with  the  adver- 
tised journey  of  the  regular  stage-coach  two 
centuries  ago : 

"York  Four  Days  Coach  Begins  The  i8th 
April,  1703.  All  that  are  desirous  to  pass  from 
London  to  York,  or  from  York  to  London,  or 
any  other  place  on  that  road,  let  them  repair  to 
the  Black  Swan  in  Holbourne,  in  London,  and 
to  the  Black  Swan  in  Coney  Street,  York,  at 
each  of  which  places  they  may  be  received  in  a 
stage-coach  every  Monday,  Wednesday  and  Fri- 
day, which  performs  the  whole  journey  in  four 
days,  if  God  permits."  A  copy  of  the  foregoing 
is  still  preserved  at  the  Black  Swan,  York. 

But  the  innovation  was  not  to  come  into  gen- 
eral use,  for  the  purpose  of  rapid  transit,  without 
opposition.  The  medical  faculty  decried  it  as 
injurious  to  the  health,  and  the  coachmen  and 
hackney  cabmen  followed  the  example  of  the 
blacksmiths  of  1819  toward  the  hobby-horse.  In 
August,  1876,  for  instance,  the  driver  of  the  St. 
Albans'  coach  lashed  with  his  whip  a  bicyclist 
who  was  passing,  while  the  guard,  who  had  pro- 
vided himself  beforehand  with  an  iron  ball  on  the 
end  of  a  rope,  threw  it  between  the  spokes  of  the 
machine  and  dragged  it  and  the  rider  to  the 
ground.  For  this  assault  the  driver  was  fined 
£2,  the  guard  £5,  and  a  further  penalty  imposed 
of  £10  for  the  damage  of  the  machine. 

But  cycling  was  not  to  be  damned  by  the 
prejudice  of  ill-natured  or  ignorant  persons,  con- 


156         THE    STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

tests  in  speed  became  the  order  of  the  day.  In 
1876,  John  Keen,  who  announced  himself  as  the 
professional  bicycle  champion,  rode  fifty  miles  in 
three  hours  six  minutes  forty-five  seconds,  and 
in  the  following  year  W.  Tomes,  of  Portsmouth, 
succeeded  in  traveling  a  mile  in  three  minutes 
ten  seconds. 

As  an  illustration  of  the  fact  that  the  future  of 
cycling  was  not  to  be  limited  to  sport  alone,  the 
Bishop  of  Manchester  publicly  stated  that  a 
brother  bishop  had  suggested  the  use  of  the  bi- 
cycle in  his  diocese.  So  slow  was  the  conference 
(and,  indeed,  the  public  generally)  to  appreciate 
the  value  of  the  cycle,  that  this  statement  was  re- 
ceived with  roars  of  laughter.  The  Bishop  of 
Carlisle  facetiously  regretted  the  hilliness  of  his 
diocese,  remarking  that  "if  there  was  one  thing 
a  bicycle  objected  to,  it  was  going  up  hill."  The 
practical  use  which  would  be  made  of  the  cycle 
by  hundreds,  even  thousands,  of  the  clergy 
throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land, 
they  could  not  yet  foresee.  Yet,  in  this  year 
(1878),  the  Times  had  this  to  say  on  the  new 
vehicle : — 

'The  bicycle  has  come  to  the  front  and  is  fight- 
ing for  existence.  Dimly  prefigured  in  the  myth- 
ical centaur,  and  then  in  the  hobby-horse  of 
mediaeval  games,  and  attempted  in  the  veloci- 
pede, now  half  a  century  old;  long  prejudiced  by 
the  evident  superiority  of  wings  to  wheels,  the 
bicycle  has  now  surmounted  the  difficulties  of 
construction,  and  adapted  itself  to  human  capa- 
bilities— it  augments  at  least  three-fold  the  loco- 
motive powers  of  an  ordinary  man.  A  bicyclist 
can  perform  a  journey  of  a  hundred  miles  in  one 


THE   BICYCLE  \  $7 

day  with  less  fatigue  than  he  could  walk  thirty; 
fifty  miles — that  is,  from  London  to  Brighton — 
as  easily  as  he  could  walk  ten;  and  a  daily  journey 
to  and  fro  between  London  and  the  distant  sub- 
urbs with  just  the  usual  results  of  moderate  ex- 


ercise/ 


In  August,  1879,  H.  Blackwell,  jun.,  traveled 
on  the  "steel  steed"  from  London  to  John  o' 
Groat's  in  eleven  days  four  hours,  while  at  Stam- 
ford Bridge,  on  a  prepared  track,  a  mile  was  run 
by  Keen  in  two  minutes  fifty-two  and  one-fifth 
seconds. 

When,  in  1880,  it  was  decided  by  the  municipal 
authorities  of  Coventry  to  mount  its  police  offi- 
cers upon  the  new  machine,  the  circumstance 
created  wide-spread  interest.  One  commentator, 
however,  suggested  that  a  defaulting  debtor  pur- 
sued by  a  constable  mounted  on  a  tricycle  and 
armed  with  a  summons,  sounds  more  like  a  hor- 
rible dream  than  a  probable  reality,  and  quoted 
Tennyson's 

**  New  men,  who  in  the  flying  of  a  wheel 
Cry  down  the  past," 

as  suitable  to  the  innovation.  It  may  be  men- 
tioned that  the  tricycle  dated  from  1878,  and  was 
the  invention  of  James  Starley  of  Coventry. 

It  was  soon  found  posible  to  make  great  speed 
on  the  tricycle,  and  five  years  after  its  introduc- 
tion C.  H.  R.  Cosset  covered  over  200  miles  in 
the  course  of  twenty-four  hours  on  the  road.  At 
this  time,  of  course,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind 
that  the  ordinary  bicycle  consisted  of  one  great 
wheel  five  feet  in  height,  and  a  smaller  one  be- 


158          THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

hind,  only  eighteen  inches  in  diameter.  The 
"safety"  bicycle,  as  it  was  called,  did  not  become 
general  until  1890,  and  the  "ordinary"  held  its 
own,  until  the  advent  of  the  inflated  tire  made 
the  new  machine  superior  both  from  the  point  of 
view  of  speed  and  comfort. 

What  was  regarded  as  an  astonishing  feat 
occurred  in  1886,  when  G.  P.  Mills  traveled  on 
a  bicycle  from  Land's  End  to  John  o'  Groat's,  a 
distance  of  86 1  miles,  in  five  days  one  hour  forty- 
five  minutes.  Some  weeks  later  the  same  cyclist 
rode  a  tricycle  over  the  same  course  in  five  days 
ten  hours,  or  thirty  hours  faster  than  it  had  ever 
been  done  before. 

As  time  went  on,  great  and  still  greater  speed 
came  to  be  attained  on  the  cycle — speed  which 
would  have  caused  the  early  champions  of  the 
"silent  steed"  to  gasp  in  astonishment.  In  1890, 
in  a  race  viewed  by  the  Prince  of  Wales,  F.  J. 
Osmond  accomplished  a  mile  in  one  minute  fifty- 
five  seconds  on  an  old-fashioned  high  bicycle. 
But  the  limit  of  speed  on  this  form  of  machine 
had  now  been  reached:  the  "safety"  and  the  in- 
flated tire  rendered  new  records  possible,  and  the 
"ordinary"  was  soon  afterward  completely  super- 
seded. 

Although  the  cyclists  had  already  surpassed 
the  speed  attained  by  the  fast  coaches  in  the 
halcyon  days  of  coaching,  yet  the  coaching  re- 
vival was  to  witness  several  new  records,  the 
most  celebrated  being  the  performance  of  July, 
1888,  between  London  and  Brighton.  In  that 
month,  James  Selby  drove  the  Brighton  coach 
from  the  "White  Horse  Cellars,"  Piccadilly,  via 
Croydon,  Merstham,  Red  Hill,  Horley,  Crawley, 


THE   BICYCLE  159 

Hand  Cross,  Cuckfield,  and  Clayton  to  Brighton 
and  back,  a  distance  of  108  miles,  in  seven  hours 
fifty  minutes.  This  remarkable  feat  was  done 
with  sixteen  changes  of  horses. 

It  was  taken  as  a  challenge  by  the  cyclists, 
who  at  once  attempted  to  beat  it.  At  first  they 
met  with  ill  success,  but  at  last  the  journey  was 
done  in  eight  hours  thirty-six  minutes  nineteen 
and  two-fifth  seconds,  by  four  riders  using  the 
same  machine  and  dividing  the  journey  into  four 
stages.  This,  however,  was  not  considered  satis- 
factory. P.  C.  Wilson  and  M.  A.  Holbein  made 
an  attempt,  single  handed,  but  failed,  and  it  was 
not  until  1890  on  an  inflated-tire  "safety"  cycle, 
that  F.  Shorland  effected  the  journey  in  seven 
hours  nineteen  minutes.  This  achievement  cre- 
ated great  enthusiasm,  and  was  commonly  re- 
garded as  an  unbreakable  record.  Yet  it  was  not 
long  before  S.  F.  Edge,  not  only  for  the  first 
time  beat  the  coach  time  for  the  outward  journey 
(three  hours  eighteen  minutes  twenty-five  sec- 
onds), but  did  the  whole  in  seven  hours  two 
minutes  fifty  seconds. 

This  was  the  fastest  time  ever  achieved  on  a 
public  turnpike  by  any  vehicle  whatsoever  in 
Great  Britain,  and  therefore  probably  in  the 
world.  Yet  fast  as  it  was,  it  was  to  be  beaten 
again  and  again,  before  the  advent  of  the  motor 
car  was  to  demolish  all  road  records;  and  in  1894, 
C.  J.  Wridgway  accomplished  the  excursion  in 
five  hours  thirty-five  minutes  thirty-two  seconds. 
Even  a  tricycle,  ridden  by  W.  R.  Toft,  achieving 
it  in  six  hours  twenty-one  minutes  thirty  seconds. 

As  to  other  examples  of  the  velocity  which  can 
be,  and  has  been  attained  on  the  road  bv  means 


I6O         THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

of  the  cycle,  we  might  mention  that  the  journey 
from  London  to  York,  197  miles,  has  been  done 
in  eleven  hours  fifty-one  minutes;  and  London  to 
Edinburgh,  400  miles,  in  twenty-eight  hours 
twenty-seven  minutes;  and  London  to  Liverpool 
in  thirteen  hours  four  minutes.  One  hundred 
miles  have  been  covered  in  four  hours  thirty-nine 
minutes  twenty-eight  seconds,  and  half  that  dis- 
tance in  two  hours  seven  minutes  and  fifteen  sec- 
onds. Great  as  these  instances  are,  they  are  sur- 
passed by  the  speed  of  the  cycle  on  a  prepared 
track,  where  100  miles  have  been  done  in  two 
hours  thirty-three  minutes  forty  seconds;  and 
fifty  miles  in  one  hour  fourteen  minutes  fifty-five 
seconds. 

The  introduction  of  the  motor  cycle,  driven  by 
steam  or  electricity,  has  naturally  influenced 
long-distance  records. 

Early  in  the  development  of  the  Daimler  motor 
certain  French  firms  turned  their  attention  to  it 
in  very  small  sizes  for  propelling  tricycles.  In 
1896  a  Dion  tricycle  ran  in  the  Paris-Marseilles 
race,  making  an  average  speed  over  the  whole 
distance  of  14.8  miles  an  hour.  In  1899  a  motor 
tricycle  accomplished  28.1  miles  an  hour,  being 
fitted  with  a  1^4  h.-p.  motor,  or  twice  the  power 
of  the  first  mentioned.  A  year  or  two  later  these 
tricycles  were  fitted  with  2.25  h.-p.  motors,  and 
some  with  two-speed  gear.  They  soon  became 
exceedingly  popular  machines,  many  persons  ac- 
complishing long  journeys  regularly  upon  them. 
In  the  Paris-Malo  race  of  1899,  231  miles  were 
covered  in  seven  hours  eleven  minutes,  an  aver- 
age of  32.2  miles  per  hour. 

We  have  already  seen  that  a  motor  bicvcle  had 


C' 
«•         rr) 


MOTOR   CARRIAGES  l6l 


been  made  by  Daimler  as  far  back  as  1885, 
for  the  next  ten  years  only  spasmodic  efforts  at 
improvement  occurred.  They  offered,  of  course, 
the  several  advantages  of  the  ordinary  bicycle 
over  the  ordinary  tricycle,  of  lightness,  easy 
steering,  single  or  narrow  wheel  track  of  smaller 
dimensions. 

In  1895  Wolfmuller  invented  his  petrol  motor 
bicycle. 

The  cycle,  as  a  useful  means  of  transit,  is  in 
universal  employment  by  doctors,  clergymen,  and 
dwellers  in  the  suburbs.  In  certain  cities  it 
takes  the  place  of  the  cab,  tram-car,  and  omnibus, 
by  clerks  and  business  men  and  women.  In  the 
country  it  is  a  favorite  method  of  progression. 
The  tradesmen's  emissary  adopts  it  in  lieu  of  the 
horse  and  cart  for  the  delivery  of  parcels,  and  it 
is  in  common  use  by  rural  postmen.  On  the 
whole,  the  cycle  as  a  means  of  rapid  transit  de- 
serves a  prominent  place  in  contemporary  econ- 
omy, quite  apart  from  the  facilities  it  offers  for 
exercise  and  sport,  in  which,  of  course,  in  the 
mere  matter  of  velocity,  it  is  rivaled  by  the  ice- 
skate  and  the  toboggan. 


CHAPTER    IX 
MOTOR    CARRIAGES 

WE  have  already  seen  in  an  earlier  chapter  how 
the  necessity  for  the  speedy  conveyance  of  pas- 
sengers and  merchandise  came  to  be  widely  felt 
in  England  early  in  the  last  century.  If  railways 
had  not  appeared  upon  the  scene — the  develop- 
ii 


l62          THE   STORY    OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

ment  of  a  new  agent  of  speed  would  have  been 
inevitable,  and  that  agent  would  have  been  the 
motor  car.  Railway  traveling  for  the  past  sev- 
enty years  has  been  at  best  a  compromise.  The 
ideal  is,  of  course,  a  conveyance  capable  of  trav- 
eling easily  and  swiftly  to  any  destination,  and 
not  restricted  to  lengths  of  rail  fixed  along  a  cer- 
tain route.  Railways  promptly  checked  the  de- 
velopment of  the  steam  locomotive  for  the  com- 
mon roads.  It  was  found  unnecessary  to  strive 
toward  the  production  of  a  light,  speedy  vehicle, 
when  a  heavy  one  on  an  iron  track  would  do  as 
well.  Thus,  all  the  early  locomotives  were  what 
we  now  designate  as  motor  cars:  and  are  by  no 
means  of  recent  introduction. 

Du  Halde  relates  that  about  the  year  1700  the 
Jesuit  missionaries  in  China  invented  certain 
mechanical  curiosities  for  the  entertainment  of 
the  Emperor  Kang-hi.  They  caused  a  wagon  to 
be  made  of  light  wood,  about  two  feet  long,  in 
the  middle  whereof  they  placed  a  brazen  vessel 
full  of  live  coals,  and  upon  them  an  eolipile,  the 
wind  of  which  issued  through  a  little  pipe  upon 
a  sort  of  wheel  made  like  the  sail  of  a  windmill. 
The  little  wheel  turned  another  with  an  axle-tree, 
and  by  that  means  the  wagon  was  set  a-running 
for  two  hours  together.  The  same  contrivance 
was  likewise  applied  to  a  little  ship  with  four 
wheels;  the  eolipile  was  hidden  in  the  middle  of 
the  ship,  and  the  wind  issuing  out  of  the  two 
small  pipes  filled  the  little  sails  and  made  them 
turn  round  a  long  time. 

It  is  a  matter  of  conjecture  whether  this  de- 
notes a  kind  of  steam  or  hot-air  engine.  It  is, 
however,  significant,  that  not  many  years  after- 


MOTOR   CARRIAGES  163 

ward  Cugnot  produced  a  steam-carriage  in  Paris, 
which  after  having  been  proved  inefficient,  was 
abandoned,  and  is  still  to  be  seen  in  the  Con- 
servatoire des  Arts  and  Metiers.  In  17/2  an 
American,  Oliver  Evans,  began  experiments  with 
steam  with  a  view  to  employing  it  as  a  substitute 
for  animal  power.  Evans  was  sanguine  enough 
to  declare  that  steam  would  one  day  be  the  prime 
agent  of  locomotion;  and  frequently  predicted 
that  the  time  would  come  when  travelers  would 
be  conveyed  on  good  turnpike  roads  at  fifteen 
miles  an  hour  or  300  miles  a  day  by  a  device  re- 
sembling his  own.  During  the  next  thirty  years 
innumerable  were  the  attempts  of  English  in- 
ventors to  employ  steam-power  on  common  roads, 
The  outlook  appeared  encouraging;  for  once 
they  had  succeeded  with  their  engine,  they  need 
not  trouble  about  railways;  excellent  highways 
already  existed  along  which  to  conduct  traffic. 
In  the  part  of  this  book  relating  to  railways,  men- 
tion has  already  been  made  of  the  Cornishman 
Trevethick's  experiments.  Griffiths  introduced  a 
steam-carriage  in  1821  ;  another  by  Gordon  in 
the  following  year  was  contrived  to  \vork  inside 
a  large  iron  drum,  as  a  squirrel  runs  in  his  re- 
volving cage,  but  was  quickly  abandoned.  Gur- 
ney  next  produced  his  engine,  which  was  marked 
by  clever  construction,  the  objectionable  noise 
being  overcome  by  causing  the  waste  steam  to 
enter  a  chamber  from  which  it  issued  with  a 
steady  and  noiseless  current  to  the  funnel.  In 
1826  it  performed  the  journey  from  London  to 
Bath,  at  which  time  other  competitors  were  in  the 
field.  Dance,  Maceroni,  Church,  and  Hancock 
each  produced  a  road  locomotive.  In  1831  Gur- 


1 64         THE    STORY   OF   RAPID    TRANSIT 

ney  had  three  steam-carriages  running  for  the 
conveyance  of  passengers  on  the  road  between 
Cheltenham  and  Gloucester,  four  trips  being 
made  daily,  at  a  greater  rate  of  speed  than  that 
of  the  stage-coaches  on  the  same  nine  miles  of 
road  and  at  half  their  fares. 

This  success  betokened  the  permanency  of  the 
new  enterprise,  but  prejudice  was  strong;  a 
formidable  opposition  was  organized,  injurious 
reports  were  circulated  and  all  travelers  cautioned 
against  trusting  themselves  to  the  clangers  of 
steam.  A  more  effectual  hindrance  was  offered 
by  the  parochial  authorities,  who  covered  a  por- 
tion of  the  road  to  a  depth  of  eighteen  inches  with 
loose  stones.  While  attempting  to  surmount  this 
impediment  the  working  axle  of  the  engine  was 
broken  and  a  stop  thereby  put  to  steam  locomo- 
tion in  this  quarter,  for  a  time.  Ere  the  inventor 
could  renew  it,  local  opposition  had  crushed  the 
whole  enterprise. 

While  this  was  happening  to  automobiles  at 
Cheltenham,  Hancock  started  a  steam-carriage 
-the  Infant — to  run  between  Stratford  and 
London.  It  excited  much  attention  owing  to 
the  compactness  and  efficiency  of  its  arrange- 
ments, and  led  to  attempts  in  other  quarters.  It 
was  even  proposed  by  the  more  sanguine  pro- 
jectors to  run  steam  omnibuses  in  all  the  great 
thoroughfares  of  London  —  a  consummation 
which  three-quarters  of  a  century  has  not  sufficed 
to  bring  about — as  well  as  in  the  suburban  dis- 
tricts and  coaches  for  Birmingham  and  Bristol. 

Hancock  built  nine  carriages  altogether,  the 
first  being  the  Infant  and  the  Era,  built  in  1831-2. 
The  latter  was  intended  to  run  the  coach  between 


MOTOR   CARRIAGES 


165 


London  and  Greenwich,  but  the  company  for 
which  it  was  built  never  got  into  working  order. 
Another,  however,  the  London  and  Paddington 


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Steam  Carriage  Company,  was  started  in  1832, 
and  Hancock's  next  carriage  was  built  to  its 
order.  The  fourth,  he  ran  daily  for  twenty-four 


1 66 


THE   STORV   OF   RAPID    TRANSIT 


weeks  between  Finsbury  Square  and  Pentonville. 
But  although  thousands  of  passengers  were  car- 
ried by  these  vehicles,  yet  commercial  success 
was  not  very  promising  for  town  service  at  the 
time,  and  extended  practise  and  experience  were 
required  to  make  what,  even  with  good  roads, 
would  have  proved  attractive  and  successful 
vehicles.  Frequent  mishaps  occurred,  and  it  is 


Steam  Road  Coach,  1833. 

to  be  feared  that  the  comfort  of  the  vehicles  was 
not  even  up  to  the  standard  of  the  time.  The 
passengers  were  all  in  front  of  the  machinery, 
but  with  powerful  and  unbalanced  engines,  and 
with  the  rough  chain-gear,  the  vibration  was  con- 
siderable. One,  for  example,  had  cylinders  no 
less  than  nine  inches  in  diameter,  and  these 
engines  had  no  fly-wheels.  Yet,  after  all,  these 
things  were  matters  for  improvement,  which 
would  have  naturally  followed  demand  for  the 
coaches,  and  for  improved  tools  and  methods  of 
building. 

When  Summers  and  Ogle  were  examined  be- 


MOTOR   CARRIAGES  167 

fore  the  Select  Committee  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons in  1831,  they  stated  that  with  one  of  the 
two  steam-carriages  of  their  construction,  they 
had  frequently  made  thirty  miles  an  hour.  It 
was  certainly  a  daring  thing  these  men  did  in 
using  steam  pressures  of  over  200  Ibs.  per  square 
inch,  in  those  days  of  imperfect  boilers. 

The  coaches  built  by  Hill  about  1840  would 
carry  nine  passengers  and  a  driver,  conductor, 
and  stoker,  at  considerable  speed  on  the  pre- 
cipitous route  between  London  and  Hastings. 
This  journey  of  128  miles  was  done  in  a  single 
clay. 

But  all  of  these  steam  coaches  and  carriages 
were  one  after  another  abandoned,  until  after  the 
disappearance  of  Hill's  carriage  in  1843  not  one 
was  left  on  the  road,  and  none  are,  so  far  as  is 
known,  preserved.  The  boorish  and  unjust  treat- 
ment meted  out  to  these  pioneers  effectually  put 
an  end  to  progress  in  steam  road  locomotion,  so 
far  as  Great  Britain  was  concerned,  and  further 
harsh  and  narrow-minded  legislation  from  1861 
to  1878  prevented  England  from  taking  advan- 
tage of  the  progress  which  had  been  made  on 
the  Continent. 

Great  Britain  had  for  half  a  century  been 
as  near  to  a  practical  self-moving*  carriage  as 
was  France  when  Serpollet,  Bollee,  Scotte,  and 
De  Dion  and  Bouton  began  in  the  early  nineties, 
and  before  the  celebrated  invention  of  Gottlieb 
Daimler  enabled  Levassor  to  build  his  high- 
speed internal  combustion  motor,  and  Benz  had 
demonstrated  its  practicability.  England  also 
possessed  the  Daimler  motor  and  was  aware  of 
Benz's  labors,  but  it  would  have  been  futile  to 


168 


THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 


attempt  to  make  a  motor  carriage  when  English- 
men were  without  the  freedom  to  use  their  own 
roads. 


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The  common  roads  were  consecrated  to  the 
uses  of  horses,  latterly  of  cyclists;  to  use  a 
mechanically  propelled  vehicle  upon  them  was 


MOTOR   CARRIAGES  169 

considered  an  outrage.  The  opponents,  there- 
fore, of  rapid  transit  upon  the  common  roads 
retarded  progress  and  experiment  for  full  sixty 
years. 

Nevertheless,  although  British  inventors  were 
denied  facilities  for  progress  in  their  country,  the 
British  public  was  very  quick  to  reap  the  benefits 
slowly  derived  through  foreign  genius  and  in- 
dustry. France  lent  free  roads  to  Bollee,  Ser- 
pollet,  Le  Blant,  and  others  turned  out  a  succes- 
sion of  ingenious  steam  vehicles,  but  it  was  not 
until  the  advent  of  the  Daimler  motor  and  the 
Benz  motor  cars  that  any  real,  rapid,  and  con- 
tinuous progress  was  made. 

We  have  now  witnessed  the  successful  employ- 
ment of  steam  for  traction,  and  while  the  world 
is  anxiously  waiting  for  the  development  of  elec- 
tricity, a  new  agent  appears.  Experiments  had 
long  been  made  with  gas  and  hot  air  as  the 
motive  power  of  engines :  science  was  now  ready 
to  experiment  with  oil  and  carburetted  air.  It 
was  known  that  the  lighter  oils,  such  as  petro- 
leum spirit  (petrol),  or  gasoline,  or  benzoline  will 
all  evaporate  readily  in  presence  of  air  and  espe- 
cially in  air  in  motion.  When  the  air  is  saturated 
with  the  oil,  i.e.,  contains  17.5  per  cent.,  it  will 
burn,  giving  a  fine  white  light.  Such  a  mixture 
of  oil,  vapor,  and  air  will  also  burn  with  explosive 
rapidity  under  the  circumstances  of  its  combus- 
tion in  a  gas  or  oil  cylinder. 

Gottlieb  Daimler,  who  had  been  for  some  years 
occupied  in  gas-engine  construction,  turned  his 
attention  to  the  production  of  small  light  petrol 
motors,  made  highly  powerful  by  their  capability 
of  running  continuously  at  very  high  speeds  of 


I/O         THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

rotation.  In  1884  he  patented  his  first  high- 
speed gas-engine,  and  in  the  following  year  ap- 
plied his  improved  invention  to  a  bicycle.  This 
machine  was  rather  clumsy  in  appearance,  but  it 
excited  then,  and  does  yet,  the  deepest  interest. 
For  it,  Daimler  devised  the  first  of  the  carburet- 
tors, of  which  there  are  now  so  many  for  carbu- 
retting  air  with  mineral  and  other  spirit  for  motor 
purposes.  The  cylinder  was  cooled  by  an  en- 
closed fan  wheel  which  sent  air  round  the  cylin- 
ders within  a  jacket. 

Daimler's  new  engines,  many  of  which  were 
made  for  launches  or  fixed  engine  purposes, 
finally  led  to  what  became  celebrated  as  the 
Daimler  motor,  which  was  introduced  into  Eng- 
land about  1892.  It  did  not,  however,  obtain 
universal  recognition  until  the  successes  of  the 
Panhard  and  Levassor  and  the  Peugeot  car- 
riages (known  as  Daimler  carriages  as  distinct 
from  steam-carriages)  appeared  between  1894 
and  1896.  A  description  of  the  principles  and 
mechanism  of  the  Daimler  motor  will  enable  the 
reader  to  understand  the  idea  of  motors  gener- 
ally, as  applied  to  motor  bicycles,  tricycles,  and 
carriages,  which  have  introduced  such  a  power- 
ful element  of  speed  into  the  common  road  traf- 
fic of  the  world. 

To  begin  with  then,  all  these  modern  gas  and 
oil  engines  are  really  hot-air  engines,  i.e.,  in 
which  the  expansion  in  volume  of  air  when 
heated  is  employed  to  give  rise  to  pressure  on  a 
moving  piston,  that  expansion  being  effected  in 
the  cylinder  containing  that  piston  by  the  ex- 
plosive or  rapid  combustion  of  a  small  charge 
of  combustible,  such  as  ordinary  coal  gas  or  the 


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1 72          THE    STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

vapor  from  naphtha,  or  petroleum  spirit,  or  from 
petroleum  when  vaporized  under  higher  tem- 
perature in  presence  of  air.  This  heating,  ex- 
pansion, and  cooling  of  the  air  is  all  done  there- 
fore in  the  working  cylinder.  In  the  earlier 
hot-air  engines  of  Stirling  and  Ericsson,  on  the 
other  hand,  two  pistons  were  used,  one  acting 
merely  as  a  displacer  piston  for  passing  cooled 
air,  which  had  done  work  in  a  working  cylinder, 
back  into  a  working  chamber,  where  it  was 
heated,  and  being  again  heated  escaped  to  the 
working  piston  which  was  in  a  position  to  be 
pushed  out,  while  the  displacer  piston  was  al- 
most still.  Such  were  of  necessity  slow  speed 
engines,  large  for  their  power,  and  very  waste- 
ful as  heat  engines  in  spite  of  certain  theories. 

The  modern  light,  spirit,  or  gas  engine  has 
a  single  piston,  which  in  its  descent  draws  air 
into  the  upper  part  of  the  cylinder.  The  rush- 
ing current  of  air  creates  a  partial  vacuum  in  one 
of  the  tubes,  the  lower  end  of  which  dips  into 
the  petroleum. 

By  this  means  a  small  quantity  of  oil  is  drawn 
up  scent-spray  fashion,  and  rushes  with  the  air 
into  the  cylinder.  The  latter,  then,  is  now  full 
of  air,  with  which  is  mixed  the  "petrol"  vapor, 
or,  in  other  words,  carburetted  air.  The  return 
or  rising  stroke  of  the  piston  taking  place,  the 
carburetted  air  is  forced  into  the  top  of  the 
cylinder  at  a  pressure  of  about  45  Ibs.  per  square 
inch.  When  the  piston  has  reached  its  topmost 
position  in  the  cylinder,  the  temperature  of  the 
air  and  vapor  mixture  being  raised  by  its  com- 
pression, it  is  readily  ignited  by  the  incandescent 
walls  of  the  "ignition  tube."  This  being  effected 


MOTOR   CARRIAGES  173 

just  as  the  piston  is  ready  to  begin  its  down 
stroke,  the  temperature  of  the  air  (about  1800° 
F.)  naturally  enhances  its  volume  twenty-fold; 
there  is  no  escape  but  by  the  downward  move- 
ment of  the  piston.  When  the  piston  reaches 
the  end  of  its  downward  stroke,  an  exhaust 
valve  is  lifted,  and  the  products  of  combustion 
of  the  vapor  and  air  forming  the  last  working 
charge  escape  into  a  subjacent  passage ;  the  oil 
supply  is  brought  by  a  pipe  situated  in  some 
convenient  part  of  the  carriage.  A  point  to  be 
remembered  is  that  the  engine  makes  four 
strokes,  or  two  revolutions,  at  least,  for  one 
working  stroke,  a  cycle  or  series  of  operations 
first  used  in  the  Otto  gas  engines.  The  very 
high  temperature,  due  to  the  combustion  of  the 
charge  in  the  cylinder,  would  heat  the  latter  also 
to  a  very  high  temperature,  were  it  not  that  in- 
genious means  are  adopted  for  keeping  it  suffi- 
ciently cool.  This  consists  of  a  slow  current  of 
water  passing  round  the  cylinder  in  a  "water 
jacket,"  the  casting  containing  the  valves  being 
similarly  protected.  As  a  considerable  quantity 
of  water  would  otherwise  have  to  be  carried  for 
cooling  purposes,  several  kinds  of  water  coolers 
have  been  invented  to  meet  this  difficulty. 

It  is  clear,  therefore,  that,  with  the  exception 
of  the  means  and  apparatus  for  converting  the 
petrol  into  vapor,  the  Daimler  motor  is  really 
a  gas  engine.  In  the  Benz  and  De  Dion  engines 
this  characteristic  is  even  more  apparent,  for  in 
these  instead  of  a  spray-making  carburettor,  as 
above  described,  a  supply  of  strongly  carbnret- 
ted  air  is  provided  by  a  petrol  surface  evaporator, 
which  the  engine  receives  just  as  a  gas  engine 


174          THE   STORY    OF   RAPID    TRANSIT 

receives  gas  and  mixes  it  with  air  sufficient  for 
combustion,  more  or  less,  according  to  require- 
ments. 

Carl  Benz  of  Mannheim  in  1886  took  out  a 
patent  for  an  oil-spirit  motor  tricycle,  the  fore- 
runner of  the  Benz  car  now  so  widely  known. 
In  this  car  the  piston  in  the  cylinder  was  con- 
nected to  a  vertical  crank-shaft.  In  the  second 
car  made  by  Benz  he  ran  at  about  ten  miles  an 
hour,  while  two  years  later,  in  1888,  he  secured 
a  speed  of  from  twelve  to  fifteen  miles  an  hour. 
The  inventor  seems  to  have  given  his  cars  more 
liberal  size  of  engine  for  such  small  vehicles  than 
many  succeeding  makers  in  their  first  efforts. 

There  is  no  governor  on  the  Benz  motor, 
speed  being  controlled  by  the  point  or  period  of 
ignition  of  the  oil  vapor,  as  already  described, 
and  by  means  of  a  throttle  valve.  Thus  the  dri- 
ver may  vary  the  speed  of  the  motor  by  varying 
the  quantity  of  the  mixture  from  about  250  to 
900  revolutions  per  minute  without  leaving  his 
seat.  The  maximum  of  the  Benz  motor  car  in 
the  Berlin-Leipzig  race  in  September,  1899,  was 
thirty-seven  miles  an  hour. 

About  the  same  time  several  English  invent- 
ors had  patented  petroleum  motors,  notably 
Butler  &  Roots,  but  it  was  not  until  MM.  Pan- 
hard  &  Levassor,  of  Paris,  acquired  the  Daimler 
motor  rights,  and  began  to  exploit  it  in  the  man- 
ufacture of  carriages,  that  the  new  automobile 
became  popular. 

Up  to  that  time,  the  future  of  self-propelled 
carriages  seemed  to  be  solely  either  with  steam 
or  electricity.  In  1880  the  elder  Bollee  of  Mans 
constructed  a  steam  coach,  which  went  at  the 


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o3 


i;6         THE   STORY   OF  RAPID    TRANSIT 

rate  of  ten  miles  an  hour,  and  numerous  auto- 
mobiles were  built  during  that  decade.  In  1889 
Leon  Serpollet  invented  and  made  the  instan- 
taneous generator  or  boiler  now  widely  known 
by  his  name.  As  at  first  constructed,  this  gen- 
erator was  composed  of  a  large  number  of  flat 
tubes,  with  only  a  capillary  water  space.  The 
tubes  were  surrounded  by  a  coating  of  cast-iron, 
which  rendered  them  very  heavy,  but  protected 
the  steel  tube  from  rapid  corrosion  in  the  high 
heat  of  the  furnace  in  and  above  which  they 
were  placed.  It  also  acted  as  a  heat  accumula- 
tor during  the  time  when  the  engines  were 
stopped,  and  no  water  was  being  pumped 
through  for  evaporation.  The  boiler  gave  very 
high  pressure  steam  considerably  superheated. 
Various  modifications  of  form  subsequently 
took  place,  and  in  1895  one  of  Serpollet's  car- 
riages was  sent  to  England  and  tested,  the 
trials  exciting  considerable  scientific  interest. 
But  by  that  time  as  many  as  ninety  oil  or  gas 
driven  machines  on  the  Daimler  principle  had 
been  turned  out  in  Paris,  and  in  order  to 
test  respective  merits  of  the  two  species  of 
automobile,  a  race  was  organized  between 
Paris  and  Rouen,  79.4  miles.  The  race  was 
won  by  a  De  Dion  &  Bouton  steam  tractor,  to 
which  was  attached  an  ordinary  landau.  It 
made  an  average  speed  of  twelve  miles  an  hour 
and  was  shown  at  the  first  exhibition  of  motor 
cars  in  England,  that  organized  by  Sir  David 
Salomons  in  October,  1894. 

But  the  superiority  of  steam  was  not  to  be 
long  maintained.  Another  race  between  Paris 
and  Bordeaux,  735  miles,  occurred  in  June,  1895, 


MOTOR   CARRIAGES  177 

when  M.  Levassor  drove  one  of  his  automobiles 
over  the  route  in  forty-eight  hours  forty-eight 
minutes,  at  a  mean  speed  of  about  fifteen  miles 
an  hour  on  the  whole  run,  with  a  maximum 
speed  of  eighteen  miles.  The  carriage  weighed 
about  twelve  hundredweight,  and  won  the  race, 
a  Peugeot  car,  also  equipped  with  a  Daimler 
motor,  coming  second. 

From  that  race  to  the  present  time,  the 
triumph  of  the  mineral-spirit  motor  has  been 
marked. 

In  1896,  in  the  race  from  Paris  to  Marseilles, 
a  distance  of  1,060  miles,  no  fewer  than  thirty- 
two  vehicles  started,  a  Panhard  motor  covering 
the  distance  in  sixty-seven  hours  forty-three 
minutes,  or  an  average  speed  of  15.62  miles  per 
hour  over  the  whole  of  that  long  run.  There 
were  three  steam  cars  among  the  competitors, 
but  all  failed  from  one  cause  or  another;  one, 
however,  only  owing  to  the  break-down  of  its 
pneumatic  tires,  for  which  it  was  too  heavy. 

Nevertheless,  a  De  Dion  steam  brake  run  by 
the  Marquis  de  Chasseloup-Loubat  won  the 
Marseilles-Nice  race  in  January,  1897,  achieving 
the  journey  of  144/^2  miles  in  seven  hours  forty- 
five  minutes,  or  eighteen  miles  an  hour.  When 
fully  loaded  this  brake,  with  passengers,  weighed 
nearly  three  tons,  but  on  this  run  it  reached 
higher  speeds  than  had  previously  been  made, 
thirty-six  miles  an  hour  being  attained  for  short 
distances. 

The  records  of  speed  in  motor  cars  quickly 
began  to  be  lowered.  In  the  Paris-Dieppe  race 
in  1897,  a  mean  speed  of  twenty-five  miles  an 
hour  was  reached,  which  placed  the  automobile 

12 


THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

on  a  par  with  the  bicycle  in  the  matter  of  speed 
over  common  roads.  The  Paris-Amsterdam 
race  in  1898  showed  27.7  miles  an  hour ;  in  1899 
the  Versailles-Bordeaux  race,  344  miles  without 
a  single  stop,  at  an  average  of  30.2  miles  for  the 
whole  journey,  occasionally  its  speed  reaching 
fifty  miles  an  hour.  This  was  accomplished  on  a 
Panhard  motor  car  carrying  two  persons,  weigh- 
ing one  ton,  and  fitted  with  a  twelve-  to  fifteen- 
horse  motor. 

In  the  United  Kingdom,  in  1896,  after  much 
agitation,  the  old  restrictions  were  to  a  large 
extent  removed,  and  the  adoption  of  the  motor 
and  its  construction  in  England  instantly  fol- 
lowed. The  Daimler  motor  was  employed  to 
propel  every  form  of  luxuriously  fitted  carriage, 
private  omnibus,  sporting  car,  light  delivery  van 
or  lorry. 

A  glance  at  the  frontispiece  and  at  the  dia- 
gram on  page  175,  to  which  the  following  key 
is  given,  will  show  the  reader  the  modern  petrol 
car  in  its  most  perfect  form : 

B,  B,  cylinders ;  C,  crank  chamber ;  E,  shaft ; 
F,  change-speed  gear  case  ;  H,  transverse  casing; 
G1,  sliding  spur  wheels — low  speed ;  G2,  sliding 
spur  wheels — intermediate  speed ;  G3,  sliding 
spur  wheels — top  speed;  H,  H1,  H2,  H3,  spur 
wheels ;  K,  hand  lever ;  K4,  rods ;  K2,  slotted 
quadrant ;  K3,  slot ;  J,  water-jacketed  brake 
drum ;  J1,  connecting  rods ;  J2,  foot  pedal ;  L, 
hand  lever;  L1,  adjustable  rod;  L2,  bell  crank 
lever ;  L3,  parallel  lever ;  L4,  pivot ;  L5,  horizon- 
tal lever  ;  LG,  ends  of  levers  ;  L7,  pivots  ;  L8,  oper- 
ating rods ;  L9,  side  brakes ;  M,  inclined  pillar  of 
steering  gear ;  M1,  steering  wheel ;  N,  water 


MOTOR   CARRIAGES  I/Q 

tank ;  O,  circulating  pump ;  P,  starting  han- 
dle ;  R,  petrol  tank ;  R-,  exhaust  box ;  R3,  escape 
pipe. 

There  is  certainly  one  objectionable  feature 
in  the  type  of  motors  just  described — speed  is 
only  attained  by  a  change  of  gear  in  transit :  that 
is  to  say,  it  is  necessary  to  push  the  teeth  of 
spur  wheels  into  the  gear  while  running  in  order 
to  change  the  degree  of  speed,  by  affecting  the 
number  of  revolutions  per  minute  of  the  motor- 
shaft.  Thus  to  change  from  three  miles  per 
hour  to  six  miles,  a  pair  of  spur  wheels  had  to 
be  thrown  out  of  gear  and  another  pair  thrown 
in  by  a  stroke  of  the  hand,  which  would  raise  the 
speed  of  the  counter-shaft  from  220  to  440  revo- 
lutions, and  so  on.  Of  course  a  skilful  motorist 
learned  to  use  the  clumsy  mechanism  so  adroitly 
that  the  occupants  of  the  car  hardly  became 
aware  that  its  acceleration  in  feet  per  second 
underwent  a  change.  On  the  other  hand  the 
shocks  and  strains  inflicted  upon  gear  by  less 
experienced  drivers  often  wrought  more  dam- 
age in  a  minute  than  good  running  would  do  in 
a  year. 

As  a  method  of  avoiding  all  these  drawbacks, 
belt  gear  has  been  introduced. 

In  the  United  States  a  very  light  and  useful 
steam-carriage  has  been  produced.  They  are 
of  simple  construction,  and  carry  fifteen  gallons 
of  water,  which  is  sufficient  for  a  run  of  about 
twenty-five  miles.  A  gallon  of  petrol  is  required 
to  heat  this  quantity ;  the  boilers  are  of  the 
tubular  type. 

As  to  motors  driven  by  electricity,  little  prog- 
ress has  so  far  been  made,  owing  to  the  fact 


180          THE   STORY    OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

that  the  weight  of  the  storage  batteries  does  not 
permit  them  to  be  employed  except  for  short 
distances. 

In  1898-99  a  number  of  electrically  driven 
cabs  were  tried  in  London ;  but  the  experiment 
failed,  and  it  was  not  until  1902  that  the  an- 
nouncement of  Mr.  Edison's  improved  storage 
battery  opened  up  new  possibilities  for  the  elec- 
tric motor  car. 

Very  few  of  the  present  electrical  motors  run 
over  forty  miles  without  recharging,  and  that 
operation  takes  several  hours.  For  the  new 
battery,  however,  is  claimed  that  it  can  be 
charged  for  a  twenty-mile  run  in  forty  minutes. 
The  proportion  of  weight  to  power  is  said  to 
be  53  Ibs.  to  one  horse-power. 

The  Edison  battery  does  not  depreciate,  there 
being  no  acid  to  eat  away  the  metal,  and  it  "will 
wear  out  several  automobiles  before  succumb- 
ing itself."  Moreover,  "the  cost  of  recharging 
the  batteries  will  be  about  the  same  as  gasoline, 
but  there  will  be  a  great  saving  in  the  cost  of 
maintenance,  and  also  freedom  from  the  annoy- 
ance of  frequent  stoppage  of  power."  The  cells 
are  composed  of  tiny  bricks  of  specially  pre- 
pared iron  and  nickel.  In  charging  and  dis- 
charging oxygen  is  driven  from  one  metal  to 
the  other,  and  then  back  again  through  the 
action  of  a  potash  solution,  and  without  corro- 
sion or  waste.  Experiments  have  been  made 
with  one  consisting  of  twenty-one  cells,  weigh- 
ing altogether  332  Ibs.,  and  this  propelled  a 
"runabout"  car  sixty-two  miles  over  roads  of 
varying  quality  and  grade.  The  run  on  com- 
paratively level  ground  with  the  same  battery 


MOTOR   CARRIAGES  l8l 

was  continued  for  eighty-five  miles  before  the 
vehicle  came  to  a  standstill. 

Renewal  of  the  water  supply  is  all  that  is 
needed  to  keep  the  cells  in  good  condition,  and 
a  process  of  recharging  has  been  improved,  so 
that  less  time  is  consumed  than  for  the  recharg- 
ing of  other  batteries.  Electric  vehicles  for  city 
work,  delivery  wagons,  etc.,  will  soon  supersede 
all  other  kinds  of  vehicles,  and  with  a  hundred- 
mile  battery  a  vehicle  should  have  little  trouble 
in  making  a  run  almost  over  the  whole  country. 
Mr.  Edison  believes  that  the  application  of 
storage  batteries  will  ultimatelv  be  extended  to 

<J  V1 

trains  and  ships,  and  if  all  be  true  that  is  claimed 
for  the  invention,  it  will  certainly  prove  a  boon 
to  motorists,  and  will  provide  a  means  of  pro- 
pulsion for  airships  that  will  make  such  a  catas- 
trophe as  that  which  overtook  the  airship  Pax 
an  impossibility. 

The  motor  car  is  already  largely  influencing 
our  social  life.  It  has  greatly  extended  the  ra- 
dius of  action  of  every  one  who  can  afford  to 
keep  a  carriage,  because  by  its  use  Brighton  is 
brought  within  a  day's  drive  from  London,  and 
Bath  is  within  the  limits  of  a  week-end  excur- 
sion by  road.  It  will  largely  affect  the  surburban 
traffic  of  our  railways,  and  improve  the  delivery 
of  goods  and  parcels  in  the  country.  It  has 
already  begun  to  be  used  by  the  Post  Office,  and 
will  soon  be  generally  adopted.  The  roads  of 
Europe  promise  to  be  as  busy  again,  if  not 
busier  than  in  the  old  posting  days,  and,  as  one 
writer  remarks,  "instead  of  post  horses  the  cry 
will  be  for  petrol." 


1 82          THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 


CHAPTER  X 
STREET   RAILWAYS 

RAPID  transit  between  the  business  quarters 
of  great  cities  and  their  suburbs  is  entirely  a 
modern  problem,  and  mostly  a  very  recent  one. 
The  brilliant  achievements  of  street  railway 
engineers  in  the  present  generation  have  only 
kept  pace  with  urgent  necessities.  The  growth 
of  many  great  cities  in  Great  Britain  and  the 
United  States  has  been  wonderful,  and  has  been 
maintained  at  a  constant  rate.  Such  a  growth 
means  increase  in  the  peopled  area  of  each  city, 
and  thus  the  distances  to  be  traversed  from  the 
residential  suburbs  to  the  business  district  are 
perpetually  increasing. 

As  it  is  in  cities  that  the  multiplicity  of  traffic 
occasions  the  most  inconvenience,  it  is  also 
where  the  need  for  the  rapid  transit  of  goods 
and  passengers  is  most  marked. 

Yet  so  effectually  had  public  enterprise  and 
capital  in  Great  Britain  centred  in  the  steam 
locomotive  and  the  railroads  in  connection 
therewith,  that  for  thirty  or  forty  years  following 
urban  transportation  was  sadly  neglected,  and, 
particularly  in  London,  facilities  for  rapid  move- 
ment left  much  to  seek.  Prior  to  the  construc- 
tion of  the  Underground  Railway,  rapid  transit 
in  London  was  represented  by  the  omnibus, 
first  started  July,  1829,  and  the  hackney  coach 
or  cab. 

But  in  the  interval  the  Americans  had  long 


STREET   RAILWAYS 


183 


perceived  the  merits  of  the  street  railway  system 
in  accelerating-  the  movements  of  the  urban  pop- 
ulation. In  New  York,  the  Fourth  Avenue  (Har- 
lem) Street  Railway  \vas  chartered  in  1831,  and 
for  twenty  years  maintained  a  monopoly  of  the 
street  railway  traffic,  after  which  a  general  ex- 


:-:  d   i     ;\    I'll'  •  :"  .  i 

V  jji/pj^l 


The  First  Omnibus. 

tension  of  the  system  followed  in  the  large  cities. 
Philadelphia  and  Boston  opened  street  railways 
in  1857,  and  from  that  period  to  the  present  the 
growth  of  street  railways  in  America  has  been 
so  wide-spread  that  more  than  500  towns  and 
cities  are  equipped  with  this  means  of  rapid 
locomotion.  As  we  shall  see,  although  horse 
traction  was  in  the  first  instance  resorted  to, 


1 84 


THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 


yet  this  was,  in  many  instances,  succeeded  by 
the  cable  system,  and  latterly  by  electricity. 

In  1858-59  an  enterprising  American,  George 
Francis  Train,  obtained  permission  to  establish 
several  short  street  railways  in  England.  But 
the  rails  were  of  a  most  objectionable  and  incon- 
venient form,  their  projecting  flanges  making  it 
difficult  and  even  dangerous  for  ordinary  vehi- 
cles to  cross  the  line  save  at  right  angles  to  the 


/'V  irtff  filUe  ntrr~f     N» 
r    <-'"W^"V"'-<™»  ( 

^~.  -J 


New  Patent  Safety  Cab. 

line.  The  result  was  that  they  were  soon  de- 
creed a  nuisance  by  the  several  local  authorities, 
and  those  in  London  having  been  laid  without 
special  Parliamentary  sanction,  their  summary 
removal  was  ordered. 

But  ten  years  later,  an  agitation  having  been 
vigorously  carried  on  meanwhile,  and  the  Met- 
ropolitan toll-bar  system  abolished,  street  rail- 


STREET   RAILWAYS  185 

ways  reappeared  in  force.  Several  companies 
were  incorporated  for  London  in  1869-70,  and 
in  the  course  of  the  next  decade  the  larger  pro- 
vincial towns  had  followed  the  example  of  the 
capital.  At  present  fully  1,000  miles  of  street 
railways  are  built  and  in  operation  in  the 
United  Kingdom,  with  a  capital  of  some  four- 
teen millions  sterling,  and  carrying  annually 
about  600  million  passengers. 

The  growing  development  of  street  railways, 
which  made  it  possible  for  the  industrial  classes 
to  avail  themselves  for  the  first  time  of  the  ad- 
vantages of  rapid  locomotion,  naturally  led  to 
still  further  efforts  on  the  part  of  the  projectors 
to  lessen  the  cost  of  working,  as  well  as  to  in- 
crease the  speed.  Various  patents  had  been 
taken  out  for  cable  traction,  i.e.,  in  which  a  rope 
should  travel  enclosed  in  an  underground  pipe, 
with  a  grip  attachment  on  the  cars  capable  of 
clutching  or  releasing  the  moving  cable.  The 
first  practical  application  of  this  plan  was  made 
in  San  Francisco  in  1873  by  the  building  of  the 
Clay  Street  cable  line.  The  road,  which  is  about 
a  mile  long,  has,  in  parts,  a  gradient  of  one  in 
six,  and  rises  to  a  height  of  300  feet  above  its 
low-level  terminus.  Animal  traction  was,  of 
course,  impracticable  over  such  a  route,  and  the 
success  of  the  new  cable  system  being  ascer- 
tained, it  was  applied  to  other  lines.  San  Fran- 
cisco alone  having  TOO  miles  of  cable  lines  in 
operation.  Ten  years  afterward  Chicago  built 
its  first  cable  line,  and  it  was  also  about  the  same 
time  adopted  for  the  Brooklyn  Bridge  Railway, 
which  conveys  an  average  of  35,000  people  in 
the  single  hour  between  5  and  6  P.M.  daily.  It 


1 86          THE   STORY   OF   RAPID    TRANSIT 

was  also  applied  to  the  great  Broadway  line,  now 
operated  by  electricity. 

England  was  somewhat  tardy  in  using  cable 
traction,  and,  when  adopted,  it  was  only  on  a 
very  limited  scale,  one  great  reason  being  the 
relative  narrowness  and  crookedness  of  the 
streets.  The  Highgate  Hill  cable  line  was 
opened  in  1884,  and  other  lines  have  been  built 
in  Edinburgh,  Birmingham,  Bristol,  and  Mat- 
lock.  The  Brixton  tramway  has  superseded 
horse-power  by  a  cable.  Australia  and  New 
Zealand  have  also  largely  adopted  the  cable  sys- 
tem. 

But  the  greater  advantages  of  electricity  were 
not  long  in  becoming  manifest,  especially  in  the 
United  States.  In  New  York,  Boston,  Chicago, 
and  Philadelphia,  and  hundreds  of  smaller  cities 
the  electric  trolley  system  has  grown  almost 
universal,  whereby  speed  has  been  doubled,  and 
the  heart  of  the  city  made  accessible  at  slight 
cost  to  the  dwellers  in  the  suburbs.  After  a 
considerable  interval  electric  street  railways  se- 
cured a  footing  in  Great  Britain,  such  towns  as 
Glasgow,  Nottingham,  and  Norwich  preceding 
the  capital,  which  did  not  enjoy  such  a  service 
until  1901,  when  the  Shepherd's  Bush  and  Kew 
to  Southall  lines  were  opened. 

There  can  be  no  question,  however,  that  no 
matter  how  conservative  London  may  have  been 
as  regards  speed  in  transit,  the  establishment  of 
some  system  partially  effecting  this  for  the  mass 
of  the  population  would  have  previously  taken 
place  but  for  the  building  of  the  underground 
Metropolitan  Railway.  When  the  idea  was  first 
proposed  of  a  railway  for  human  beings  to  travel 


No.  i.     Showing  construction. 


No.  2.     Iron  shields,  with  a  workman  in  each  com- 
partment. 


THE  THAMES  TUNNEL. 


1 88          THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

along  under  the  streets  and  among  the  sewers 
it  was  regarded  with  contemptuous  amusement. 
But  London's  stupendous  growth  demanded  new 
and  improved  means  of  communication;  the 
streets  were  already  too  congested  with  traffic; 
the  choice  lay  between  a  railway  over  the  top 
of  the  houses  or  beneath  the  pavement,  and  the 
latter  alternative  was  the  one  chosen.  Of  course, 
the  omnibus  and  cab  interests,  unconsciously  fol- 
lowing the  example  of  their  predecessors,  the 
stage-coachmen,  were  fiercely  opposed  to  the 
scheme,  but  when  powerless  to  prevent  it, 
wreaked  their  spleen  in  bitter  jests  and  sarcasm. 

In  1854  the  first  Act  of  Parliament  was  passed 
authorizing  the  line,  and  the  works  began  in 
1860.  Three  years  later  the  first  section  of  the 
line — Paddington  to  Farringdon  Street — was 
opened,  in  which  year  the  Lords'  Committee 
recommended  that  the  inner  circle  of  the  further 
projected  lines  should  abut  upon,  if  not  actually 
join,  most  of  the  principal  railway  termini  in  the 
metropolis.  The  total  length  of  the  inner  circle 
is  13  miles  176  yards,  two  miles  of  which  length 
is  laid  with  four  lines  of  rails,  and  the  total  length 
of  the  two  underground  systems  is  over  forty 
miles.  Even  when  the  utmost  precautions  are 
taken,  tunneling  through  a  town  is  a  risky  opera- 
tion. Settlements  may  occur  years  after  the  com- 
pletion of  the  works;  water  mains  may  be  broken 
in  the  streets  and  in  the  houses;  stone  staircases 
may  fall  down;  and  other  unpleasant  symptoms  of 
unstability  may  show  themselves.  But  rapid 
transit  was  the  goal  in  view;  in  the  case  of  Lon- 
don, and,  indeed,  all  large  cities,  railways^  de- 
signed for  local  service  must  of  necessity  be  either 


-bi 
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O 


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OS 

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ESS 


190         THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

sunk  below  or  raised  above  the  street  level;  and 
London  public  opinion  was  against  the  elevated 
railway,  which  has  had  such  a  great  success  in 
New  York  and  Liverpool.  By  means  of  the  new 
"Underground"  it  became  possible,  no  matter 
how  congested  the  street  traffic,  to  reach  the 
Bank  from  Hammersmith,  a  distance  of  seven 
miles,  traversing  or  rather  following  the  line  of 
most  resistance,  in  twenty  minutes.  Here,  then, 
we  see  a  vast  improvement  as  regards  economy 
of  time.  In  1800  a  walk  (there  was  no  other 
popular  means  of  transit)  to  the  Bank  from  Ham- 
mersmith occupied  about  two  hours;  in  1850  the 
omnibus  did  the  journey  in  fifty  minutes. 

But  New  York  was  soon  to  be  better  served 
than  London.  In  1867  the  first  attempt  was 
made  to  improve  existing  means  of  transit 
between  the  residential  and  the  business  quar- 
ters of  the  city  by  the  construction  of  an  ele- 
vated railway  actuated  by  a  wire  rope  and  a 
stationary  engine.  The  undertaking  passed 
into  other  hands  in  1872,  and  by  1880  the 
elevated  railway  system  was  worked  over 
thirty-four  and  a  half  miles  of  line;  165,000  pas- 
sengers on  an  average  were  carried  per  day,  and 
trains  ran  every  two  minutes  during  the  morning 
and  evening,  with  a  somewhat  longer  interval  in 
the  quieter  hours  of  the  day.  The  railway  is  sup- 
ported on  square,  wrought-iron  lattice-work  col- 
umns let  into  cast-iron  base-blocks,  founded  on 
brickwork  and  concrete,  at  a  distance  of  from 
thirty-seven  to  forty-four  feet  apart.  In  parts, 
where  the  street  traffic  is  crowded,  a  single  row 
of  columns  is  planted  in  the  line  of  each  curb,  on 
the  upper  ends  of  which  a  pair  of  longitudinal 


STREET   RAILWAYS  IQI 

girders  are  fixed  to  carry  a  line  of  way  twenty- 
two  and  a  half  feet  high  above  street  level,  at  each 
side  of  the  street.  In  other  situations  the  two 
lines  of  way  are  supported  at  a  height  of  twenty- 
one  feet  on  longitudinal  girders  in  the  middle  of 
the  street  fixed  to  transverse  girders  which  span 
the  street  and  are  carried  on  columns  at  the  curbs. 
The  system  certainly  has  its  drawbacks,  and  does 
not  make  for  beauty  or  picturesqueness,  but  for  a 
time,  even  when  the  locomotives  were  worked  by 
steam,  it  made  New  York  the  most  admirably 
served  city  in  the  world  in  the  matter  of  rapid 
transit,  it  being  possible  to  go  from  Harlem  to 
the  Battery,  nine  miles,  in  thirty  minutes. 

Meanwhile,  the  world's  greatest  city  had  rested 
content  with  the  facilities  afforded  by  its  under- 
ground railway  and  its  horse-traction  tramways, 
in  spite  of  the  daily  increasing  evidences  that 
these  were  inadequate  to  the  needs  of  the  huge 
metropolis.  At  length,  in  1890,  an  electric  rail- 
way, the  City  and  South  London,  was  opened. 

The  main  question  at  present  is  to  decide  upon 
the  respective  merits  of  the  polyphase  alternating 
current  system  and  of  the  standard  or  direct-cur- 
rent in  their  application  to  electric  traction.  En- 
gineers generally  are  aware  that  the  change  from 
steam  to  electricity  is  bound  to  come  in  Great 
Britain,  and  are  naturally  anxious  to  acquire  ex- 
perience in  the  working  of  both  systems.  The 
Central  London  railway  is  an  example  of  the 
direct-current  system,  and  apart  from  the  excess- 
ive vibration,  has  so  far  been  successful.  It  has 
been  shown  in  Germany  that  the  three-phase  or 
Ganz  system  is  capable,  under  the  present  con- 
struction, of  125  miles  an  hour.  But  this  ques- 


THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

tion  of  high  speed  has  little  or  no  bearing  on  a 
short  line  such  as  the  Metropolitan  or  District 
railways  of  London. 

In  London  three  tubular  electric  railways  are 
in  operation,  nine  others  are  in  course  of  con- 
struction or  have  been  authorized,  in  all  fifty- 
two  miles.  It  is  proposed  to  work  the  whole  of 
these  lines  on  what  is  known  to  electricians  as 
the  "multiple-unit"  system,  and  under  the  super- 
vision of  a  single  authority.  If  these  various 
deep-tunnel  roads  adopt  one  system  on  all  sec- 
tions, the  companies  working  harmoniously  to- 
gether, London  would  have  the  most  perfect 
high-speed  transit  network  in  the  world.  The 
"multiple-unit"  system  has  already  been  proved 
to  be  the  best  practically  and  commercially  for 
urban  rapid  transit.  Its  main  principle  consists 
in  making  up  every  train  of  a  series  of  perfect 
and  independent  units,  any  one  of  which  can,  if 
required,  be  operated  by  itself  or  detached  with- 
out interfering  with  the  other  units.  Each  unit 
mav  consist  of  two  motor  cars,  one  at  each  end, 

•> 

and  the  unit  can  be  worked  from  either  end 
(only  one  set  of  motors  working  at  a  time),  and 
can  therefore  be  reversed  at  any  crossing,  at  the 
terminus,  or  in  case  of  breakdown  on  the  line. 
To  the  motorman  the  driving  is  simplicity  itself, 
for  the  whole  series  is,  in  operation,  but  a  long 
unit.  The  direct  current  conveyed  at  a  low  volt- 
age to  each  motor  is  automatically  limited  to  its 
safe  capacity.  This  is  the  system  in  use  in  Chi- 
cago; on  the  Brooklyn  and  Boston  Elevated  Rail- 
ways; on  the  Paris-Versailles  Railway;  and  on 
the  Berlin  Elevated  and  Underground  Electric 
Railway. 


STREET   RAILWAYS  193 

In  the  United  States  at  present  there  are  no 
fewer  than  150  electric  railways  more  than  fifty 
miles  in  length,  and  these,  in  many  cases,  run 
parallel  with  existing  steam  lines,  competing  for 
the  passenger  traffic  in  the  most  populous  dis- 
tricts. The  linking  of  New  York  and  Boston  by  an 
electric  railroad  more  than  185  miles  long  is  all 
but  complete.  The  Jersey  City  electric  system 
has  extended  within  twenty  miles  of  Philadel- 
phia. The  New  York  Elevated  Railway  is  now 
equipped  with  electric  motors.  The  New  York 
Rapid  Transit  Subway,  begun  in  March,  1900, 
promises  to  be  one  of  the  greatest  in  the  world, 
and  its  construction,  much  of  it  under  the  busiest 
streets  of  the  great  metropolis,  has  been  one  of 
the  greatest  and  most  interesting  engineering 
problems  of  recent  years.  The  route  embraces  a 
line  extending  the  entire  length  of  Manhattan 
Island,  from  City  Hall  Park  to  Kingsbridge; 
another  touching  the  main  line  at  iO4th  Street 
and  extending  northeastward  into  the  Bronx  dis- 
trict as  far  as  Bronx  Park ;  and  an  extension  down 
Broadwray  to  Battery  Park  and  thence  under  the 
East  River  to  Brooklyn,  in  all  about  twenty-five 
miles  of  track.  The  cars  are  to  be  operated  by 
electricity. 

Nevertheless,  speed  is  no  faster  on  the  new 
electric  lines  than  on  those  worked  by  steam. 
Until  the  problem  of  high  speed,  long  distance, 
electric  traction  has  been  satisfactorily  solved, 
the  latter  are  in  no  immediate  danger  of  displace- 
ment. But  in  the  great  cities,  electric  traction 
is  rendering  a  solution  of  the  housing  problem 
also  at  hand;  it  must  in  time  effect  a  complete 
redistribution  of  the  population  of  overcrowded 

13 


194          THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

London.  The  working  man  will  more  and  more 
make  his  home  in  the  purer  air  of  the  suburbs, 
and  the  jaded  professional  man  and  merchant  will 
live  on  the  coast  or  in  the  country,  conveyed  by 
high-speed  electric  trains  in  the  same  time  that  it 
now  takes  steam  trains  to  crawl  to  the  suburbs. 

Moreover,  there  is  a  growing  need  of  a  subway 
for  freight  trains,  so  that  heavy  goods  can  be 
taken  from  ships  and  ferries,  and  carried  on  belt- 
line  cars  to  warehouses  and  stores  in  different 
parts  of  the  city.  At  present  the  transfer  of  bag- 
gage and  freight  through  New  York  City  is  very 
expensive,  as  well  as  slow  and  troublesome.  A 
tunnel  freight  road  would  greatly  promote  the 
prosperity  of  the  city  as  well  as  the  convenience 
of  shippers. 

In  a  few  years  the  whole  city  may  be  under- 
mined with  railroad  tunnels  and  passenger  sub- 
ways between  tunnel  stations  and  business  blocks. 
As  soon  as  the  people  begin  to  enjoy  the  im- 
proved facilities,  the  demand  for  rapid  extension 
will  be  too  strong  to  resist. 

The  cities  that  are  foremost  in  this  movement 
will  become  the  object  lessons  of  the  world.  Each 
city  has  its  own  peculiar  conditions  to  meet,  and 
yet  so  many  conditions  are  common  to  all  that 
in  time  a  kind  of  standard  practise  will  be  evolved 
through  the  experience  of  different  communities. 

A  recent  investigation  shows  that  of  thirty- 
seven  representative  cities  in  twenty-five  differ- 
ent countries  all  over  the  world,  eight  of  the 
municipalities  own  and  operate  the  street  trans- 
portation lines ;  four  own  the  lines  and  lease 
them  to  companies  which  operate  them;  and  in 
three  others  provision  is  made  for  municipal 


STREET   RAILWAYS  195 

ownership  at  a  future  time.  In  eight  of  these 
cities  passengers  are  allowed  to  stand  in  the 
aisles ;  in  all  others  it  is  forbidden. 

Not  only  has  the  number  of  street  accidents 
per  thousand  of  population  been  greatly  di- 
minished by  the  modern  methods  of  transit,  but 
as  the  horses  and  mules  have  been  duly  sup- 
planted, the  average  health  of  the  community 
has  improved.  This  is  probably  one  of  the 
many  reasons  for  the  reduction  of  the  death- 
rate  in  New  York  City  from  26.30  in  1888  to 
18.88  in  1899.  Thus  through  the  practical 
science  of  rapid  transit  all  things  work  to- 
gether for  human  good.  Rapid  transit'  is  a 
necessity  of  modern  city  life  ;  but  in  satisfying 
this  necessity  a  multitude  of  benefits  accrue  to 
the  whole  community.  The  result  of  all  this 
costly  effort  must  influence  the  future  course  of 
civilization  and  perfect  in  a  decided  fashion  the 
modern  city  which  owes  its  present  congestion 
to  the  development  of  steam  railroads. 

Ian   Maclaren  recentlv  wrote   of  Americans: 

*• 

"No  man  goes  slow  if  he  has  the  chance  of 
going  fast ;  no  man  stops  to  talk  if  he  can  talk- 
walking  ;  no  man  walks  if  he  can  ride  in  a 
trolley-car;  no  one  goes  on  a  trolley-car  if  he  can 
get  in  a  convenient  steam  car :  and  by  and  by, 
no  one  will  go  in  a  steam  car  if  he  can  be  shot 
through  a  pneumatic  tube.  .  .  .  There  is 
nothing,"  he  added,  "an  American  cannot  do, 
except  rest/' 

This  reference  to  the  pneumatic  tube  suggests 
the  higher  hopes  which  have  from  time  to  time 
been  entertained  of  this  agent  as  a  means  of 
rapid  transit. 


1 96          THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

Early  in  the  last  century  Meclhurst  made  a 
proposal  to  construct  a  railway  on  this  principle, 
the  carriages  moving  through  an  air-tight  tun- 
nel. A  short  pneumatic  railway  was  laid  down 
in  the  Crystal  Palace  grounds  in  1865  by  Mr. 
Rammel.  It  consisted  of  a  single  line  of  rails 
in  a  tunnel  600  yards  in  length,  along  which 
ran  a  carriage.  Motion  to  the  latter  was  con- 
veyed by  means  of  a  fan  or  hollow  disk  twenty- 
two  feet  in  diameter,  which  either  condensed  or 
rarefied  the  air  as  required  according  to  the  ad- 
justment of  certain  valves.  This  experiment 
was,  however,  soon  discontinued,  and  the  only 
way  air  is  used  now  in  the  propulsion  of  vehicles 
is  in  a  compressed  state,  and  working  a  com- 
pressed-air engine,  as  at  Paris,  Nantes,  and 
Chester. 

The  mono-rail  promises  to  work  wonders  in 
the  near  future.  It  is  now  proposed  to  adopt  it 
between  London  and  Brighton  and  Manchester 
and  Liverpool,  where  Behr's  system  claims  to 
attain  the  high  speed  of  no  miles  an  hour. 
During  trials  made  in  1898  in  Belgium,  the 
highest  official  recorded  speed  was  83  miles,  the 
traveling  being  smooth  and  pleasant. 

The  accompanying  illustration  shows  the 
moving  platform  in  operation,  a  system  from 
which  also  much  is  expected. 

When  one  is  asked  "What  is  the  value  of 
rapid  transit  ?  what  difference  does  it  make 
whether  we  reach  Edinburgh  in  eight  hours  or 
eighteen,  or  gain  Cologne  from  London  in 
sixteen  or  thirty  hours?"  the  answer  to  both  is 
easy.  Despatch  is  not  only  the  soul  of  business, 
but  international  understanding  and  good-will 


STREET    RAILWAYS 


197 


largely  depend  upon  facile  intercommunication. 
According  to  Professor  Bryce,  in  enumerating 
the  causes  of  Anglo-American  amity,  "the  ocean 
steamers  have  done  perhaps  most  of  all,  because 
they  have  enabled  the  two  peoples  to  know  each 
other."  When  it  was  a  two  days'  journey  from 


Moving  Platform,  Paris  Exhibition,   1900. 

London  to  Calais,  a  comprehension  of  France, 
such  as  is  enjoyed  to-day  by  many  thousands, 
was  impossible  to  Englishmen. 

As  to  the  far  future  of  rapid  transit  only  the 
poet  and  dreamer  can  tell  us,  he  who  has 


(S 


dipt  into  the  future  far  as  human  eye  can  see, 
Saw  the  vision  of  the  world  and  all  the  wonders  that  would  be. 
Saw  the  heaven  fill  with  commerce,  argosies  ot  magic  sails, 
Pilots    of    the    purple    twilight,    dropping    down   with   costly 
bales." 

In  ten  years'   time  (Baron   Henri  de  Roths- 


198          THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 

child  has  prophesied)  there  will  not  be  a  single 
vehicle  in  Paris  drawn  by  a  horse.  The  inge- 
nious author  of  "Anticipations"  believes  that 
the  motor — hired  or  privately  owned — will  solve 
for  first-class  passengers  the  problem  of  transit 
in  the  future.  It  will  be  capable  of  a  day's  jour- 
ney of  300  miles  or  more ;  one  will  change  noth- 
ing— unless  it  be  the  driver — from  stage  to 
stage,  moving  as  one  wishes  and  resting  where 
one  wishes,  combining  all  the  attractiveness  of 
old-fashioned  posting,  with  quadruple  and  quin- 
tuple speed. 

"No  one,"  says  Mr.  Wells,  "who  has  studied 
the  civil  history  of  the  nineteenth  century  will 
deny  how  far-reaching  the  consequences  of 
changes  in  transit  may  be,  and  no  one  who  has 
studied  the  military  performance  of  General 
Buller  and  General  De  Wet  but  will  see  that 
upon  transport,  upon  locomotion,  may  also 
hang  the  most  momentous  issues  of  politics  and 
war.  The  growth  of  our  great  cities,  the  rapid 
peopling  of  America,  the  entry  of  China  into  the 
field  of  European  politics  are,  for  example,  quite 
obviously  and  directly  consequences  of  new 
methods  of  locomotion." 

Decry  all  speed  and  laud  the  leisur'd  mole, 

•  «  •  •  •  • 

The  world  moves  yet  but  fleeter  to  its  goal. 


INDEX 


A. 

Aberdeen,    steamship,    60. 

Accelerator,  the,  primitive  form 
of  bicycle,  15. 

Aerial    navigation,    114. 

Airships,    114. 

Allen,  Horatio,  engineer,  87, 
88. 

Allepode,  the,  primitive  form  of 
bicycle,  151. 

Allport,  Mr.,  on  speed  of  rail- 
ways in  1845,  71,  75- 

America,  South,  improved  com- 
munication with,  59. 

Amontons,  experiments  with  the 
telegraph,  98. 

Anderson,  Dr.  James,  early  ad- 
vocate of  railways,  28,  31. 

Arban,  aeronaut,    123. 

Ariel,    tea   ship,    46. 

Armand   Barbes,    balloon,    127. 

Arundel,    channel    steamer,    62. 

Asia,  steamship,  transatlantic 
record,  54. 

Atlantic,    steamship,     53. 

Atlantic   cable,    136. 

Atlantic  ocean,  first  steamship 
to  cross,  47. 

Australia,  discovery  of  gold  in, 
57;  express  trains  in,  92. 

Austria,    railways    of,    65,   90. 

Automobiles,    161. 


B. 

Baldwin,  Matthias  W.,  locomo- 
tive builder,  88. 

Ballooning,     114. 

Baltimore   &  Ohio   Ry.,   86. 

Batteries,    storage,    180. 

Behr's    mono-rail,     196. 

Belgium,  railways  of,  65,  66, 
90. 


Bell,    Alexander    Graham,    claim 

to   invention   of   the  telephone, 

144. 

Bell's    Comet,  steamship,   47,   48, 
Benz's    motor-car,    167,    169,    173, 

174. 

Berlin,    City    of,    steamship,    61. 
Betancourt,       experiments       with 

the    electric   telegraph,    104. 
Bicycle,    the,    148;    opposition    to 

the,    155;   records,    early,    153. 
Bivector,    the,  primitive   form   of 

bicycle,    151. 

Blackwell,   H.,  Jr.,  bicyclist,   157. 
Blanchard,   aeronaut,    118. 
Bollee's        steam-carriage,        167, 

174. 
Bourseul,     Charles,     experiments 

with   the   telephone,    143. 
Bouton's       steam-carriage,       167, 

176. 

Braithwaite,    inventor,    38. 
Bretagne,    balloon,     127. 
Britannia,   steamship,    52. 
Britannic,    steamship,    60. 
Buchanan,    James,    and    Atlantic 

cable,    140. 
Burcham,    aeronaut,   120. 


C. 


Cable  system  of  street   railways, 

185. 

Cabriolet,    the,   20,    21. 

Campania,   steamship,    61. 

Campbell,  locomotive  builder, 
88. 

Canadian    Pacific   Ry.,   92. 

Canals,    early,    21. 

Carriages,  motor,  161;  self -mov- 
ing, 150. 

Cclerifere,  the,  149. 

Chalmers,  George,  improvement 
in  mail  service,  18. 


199 


2OO 


THE   STORY   OF  RAPID   TRANSIT 


Clumsy,    balloon,    130. 

Chappe,  Claude,  experiments 
with  the  telegraph,  98,  103. 

China,    mail   service  to,    56. 

Church's     steam-carriage,     163. 

Clark,  Latimer,  inventor  of 
pneumatic  dispatch,  145. 

Collins   Line,    52;    failure  of,    54. 

Columbus,    the   voyage    of,    51. 

Comet,    Bell's    steamship,  47,  48. 

Compressed  air,  as  a  motor 
power,  196. 

Coxwell,    aeronaut,    122,    123. 

Cugnot,  Nicholas  Joseph,  in- 
ventor, 33. 

Cunard,    Samuel,    52. 

Cunard    Line,    52. 

Cycles,   motor,    160,    170. 

D. 

Dagnerre,    balloon,    127. 
Daimler    motor,     160,     167,    169. 
Dalzell,    Gavin,   bicycle   of,    152. 
Dance's    steam-carriage,    163. 
Dandy-horse,    the,    148. 
De    Dion's    steam-carriage,     167, 

173,    176,    177- 

De  Forest,  Lee,  system  of  wire- 
less telegraphy,  113. 

Delaware  &  Hudson    Ry.,   86. 

De  Lome,  Dupuy,  aeronaut,  135. 

De   Touvielle,    aeronaut,   125. 

Deutschland,    steamship,    61,    63. 

Diligence,  the,  as  a  mode  of 
Continental  travel,  65,  69. 

Dining-car,   81. 

Dufay,  experiments  with  elec- 
tricity, 102. 

Durouf,   Jules,    aeronaut,    125. 

E. 

Edgeworth,  experiments  with 
the  telegraph,  100. 

Edison,  improvement  of  the 
telephone,  144;  storage  bat- 
tery, 1 80. 

Electricity,  applied  to  motor 
carriages,  179;  to  ocean  ships, 
63;  to  street  railways,  93,  95, 
186,  191. 

Elevated  railways,  Boston,  192; 
Berlin,  192;  New  York,  189, 
100,  193. 

Empire  State   Express,   83. 

Engines,  improvement  of  ma- 
rine, 60. 


Enterprise,    steamer,    54. 
Era,    1  he,    steam-coach,    164. 
Ericson,    inventor,    38. 
Europe,    travel    in,    in   eighteenth 

century,   21. 
Evans,    Oliver,    experiments  with 

the     steam-carriage,      163. 
Experiment,     the,     first     railway 

passenger  coach,   37. 
Express,    stage-coach,    68. 
Express  trains,  speed  of,    73,   76, 

84,  89. 

F. 

Field,  Cyrus  W.,  promoter  At- 
lantic cable,  138. 

Fitch,    John,    inventor,    46. 

Flying  Coach,  The,  mail-coach, 
27. 

Flying  Dutchman,   express  train, 

73,   77- 
Fhing    Scotsman,    express   train, 

84. 

foreign    Mail,    stage-coach,    68. 

Forth-Clyde  canal,    first,   21. 

France,  railways  of,  64,  85,  90; 
the  telegraph  in,  98,  103,  109. 

Franco-Prussian  War,  use  of 
balloons  in,  125;  use  of  car- 
rier-pigeons in,  131. 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  on  aerial 
navigation,  115. 

Fulton,  Robert,  experiments 
with  steam  navigation,  47. 

Fiirst    Bismarck,    steamship,    61. 

G. 

Galilee,  balloon,    127. 

Gambetta,     escape     from     Paris, 

127. 
Gamble,     experiments     with     the 

telegraph,    100. 
Garnerin,    aeronaut,    120. 
Gasoline  as  a  motive  power,  169. 
Gauss,       experiments      with      the 

electric    telegraph,    105. 
Gcant,    Nadar's    balloon,    123. 
Germanic,    steamship,    60. 
Germany,    railways     of,     65,    66, 

90. 

Godard,    Eugene,    aeronaut,    125. 
Godard,    Jules,    aeronaut,    124. 
Gordon's   steam-carriage,    163. 
Grand  Trunk   Ry.,  92. 
Gray,   Elisha,  claim   to  invention 

of  the  telephone,  144. 


INDEX 


2OI 


Gray,  James,  early  advocate  of 
railways,  28,  32,  35. 

Gray,  Stephen,  experiments  with 
electricity,  101. 

Great    Britain,    steamship,    52. 

Great  Eastern,  lays  the  Atlantic 
cable,  139,  140. 

Great    Northern    Ry.,     78. 

Great  Western,  steamship,  cross- 
es the  Atlantic,  50. 

Great  \Yestern  Railway,  73,  77> 
107. 

Green,    Charles,    aeronaut,    121. 

Griffith's   steam-carriage,    163. 

Gurney's   steam-carriage,    163. 

H. 

Hackney  coach,    16,    182. 

llackworth,  Thomas,  inventor, 
38. 

Hancock's  steam-carriage,  163, 
164. 

Hawaii,  steamship  communica- 
tion with,  60;  telegraph  cable 
to,  141. 

Herald,  the,    mail-coach,    26. 

Hertz's  experiments  witli  wire- 
less telegraphy,  113. 

Hill's   steam-carriage,    167,    168. 

Hobby-horse,    the,    148. 

Holland,    railways   of,   66,   90. 

Homer,  Henry,  on  improved 
transit  in  1767,  19. 

Hooke,  Dr.  Robert,  experiments 
with  the  telegraph,  97;  with 
the  telephone,  141. 

Hughes,  improvement  of  the 
telephone,  144. 

Huskisson,  Mr.,  death  of,  37, 
40. 

I. 

India,      express     trains     in,     92; 

mail  service  to,   55. 
Infant,   The,  steam-coach,    164. 
Inman    Line,    54,    60. 
Italy,    railways   of,    66,    90. 


J. 


Jacqttard.    balloon,    129. 
James's   steam-carriages,    165. 
Jeffries,     Dr.,    aeronaut,     118. 
Jules    I'arrc,    balloon,    129. 


K. 

Keen,  John,   early  bicyclist,    156, 


157- 

Krebs,      French     aeronaut,     114, 

135- 

Kronprinz  Wilhclm,  steamship, 
61. 

L. 

Lake    Shore    Ry.,    91. 

Lamond,  experiments  with  the 
electric  telegraph,  103. 

Lana,  Francis,  airship  of,  115, 
1 1 6. 

Lesage,  experiments  with  the 
electric  telegraph,  103. 

Levassor  motor-car,  167,  170, 
174. 

L  Imperial,    balloon,    125. 

Lindsay,  J.  B.,  experiments 
with  wireless  telegraphy,  112. 

Liverpool  &  Manchester  Ry.,  37, 
42. 

Locomotives,  the  first,  33;  first 
in  United  States,  87;  Ameri- 
can, value  of,  88;  Braith- 
waite's,  38;  Cugnot's,  33; 
Ericson's,  38;  T.  Hack- 
worth's,  38;  Stephenspn's, 
34;  Rocket,  38;  Robison, 
Watt,  and  Murdoch's,  34; 
Trevethick's,  34,  163. 

London  &  Birmingham  Ry.,  32, 
72. 

London   &  Woolwich  Ry.,  28. 

Lucania,    steamship,    61. 

Lunardi,  Vincent,  aeronaut, 
1 1 6,  119. 


M. 

Macadam,  John  F.,  26. 

Maceroni's    steam-carriage,    163. 

M'Millan,  Kirkpatrick,  bicycle 
of,  152. 

Magnetic    tick,    143. 

Mail-coaches,  system,  establish- 
ment of  the,  21 ;  speed,  25,  68; 
globular-shaped,  29. 

Manivelociter,  the,  primitive 
form  of  bicycle,  151. 

Marconi,  \Yilliam,  experiments 
with  wireless  telegraphy,  113. 

Mason,    Monck,    aeronaut,    121. 

Mayall,   early   bicyclist,    152. 


2O2 


THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 


Midland    Ry.,    70,    74,    78. 

Miller,    Patrick,   inventor,  46. 

Mohawk  &  Hudson   Ry.,  86. 

Mono-rail   systems,    196. 

Mont   Cenis  tunnel  opened,  58. 

Montgolfier,  brothers,  invent 
balloon,  116. 

Morse,  Prof.  S.  F.  B.,  invents 
the  electric  telegraph,  104. 

Motor  carriages,  frontispiece,  161, 
171;  diagram,  175,  178;  rec- 
ords, 176. 

Motor  cycles,   160,    170. 

Municipal  ownership  of  street 
railways,  194. 

Murdoch,    inventor,    34. 

Murray,  Lord  George,  experi- 
ments with  the  telegraph,  100. 


N. 

Nadar,  aeronaut,  125;  Gcant, 
ascension  of  the,  123. 

Navigation,  steam,  first  at- 
tempts at,  44. 

Newcastle-on-Tyne,    tramway    at, 

3»- 
Newspaper    telegrams,    first,    107. 

New   York  Central  Ry.,  83,   84. 

Nollet,  experiments  with  elec- 
tricity, 1 02. 

North    German  Lloyd,   61. 

Northumbrian,    locomotive,     39. 

North-Western  Ry.,  38,  78, 
1 06. 

Novelty,  the,  Braithwaite  & 
Ericson's  locomotive,  38. 


o. 

Odier,  observations  on  the  tele- 
graph, 102. 

Ogle's   steam-carriage,    167. 

Omnibus,    London,    182,    183. 

Orient,  steamship,  record  trip, 
60. 

Orient  Express,   91. 

Orient  Steam  Navigation  Co., 
60. 


P. 

Pacific,    steamship,     transatlantic 

record,    54. 
Pacific   cables,    141. 


Page's  experiments  with  the 
telephone,  147. 

Palmer,  John,  establishes  mail- 
coach  system,  21. 

Panhard's   motor   car,    170,    174. 

Paris,  siege  of,  balloons  at,  125; 
carrier  pigeons  at,  131. 

Paris-Versailles  electric  rail- 
way, 192. 

Passenger  service,  first,  36; 
improvement  of,  75. 

Peninsular   &    Oriental    Co.,    56. 

Peninsular    Steam    Co.,     56. 

Pennsylvania    Ry.,    89. 

Petroleum  as  a  motive  power, 
169. 

Peugeot's   motor   car,   170. 

Pigeons,  carrier,  use  of,  at  siege 
of  Paris,  131;  speed  of,  133. 

1'tanet,    the,    locomotive,    41. 

Platforms,    moving,    196. 

Pneumatic    tube,     the,     145,     195. 

Popham,  Sir  Howe,  inventor  of 
the  semaphore,  101. 

Postal  service,  in  1609,  n;  in 
1635,  14;  improvement  by  in- 
troduction of  railways,  43, 
146;  Indian,  55. 

Post  Office  Act,    1656,    15. 

Preece,  Sir  William,  experi- 
ments with  wireless  telegra- 
phy, 113- 

Propcllcr,  the,  first  boat  to  adopt 
the  screw  principle,  54. 


R. 


"Race    to    the    North,"    the,    78. 

Rails,  iron,  30,  36,  88;  wooden, 
30. 

Railways,  the  first,  25;  develop- 
ment of,  64;  electric,  93,  95, 
186,  191;  speed  of,  in  1845, 

71. 
Reis,     Philip,     experiments     with 

the    telephone,    143. 
Renard,     French     aeronaut,     114, 

135- 

Roads,  condition  of,  in  England 
in  eighteenth  century,  13;. 
improvements  in,  26;  freedom 
of  the,  1 68. 

Robert,  brothers,  aeronauts, 
117. 

Robison,    Dr.,    inventor,     34. 

Rocket,  the,  Stephenson's  loco- 
motive, 38,  87. 


INDEX 


203 


Rogers,    locomotive   builder,   88. 
Ronalds,     experiments     with    the 

electric    telegraph,    104. 
Royal    George,    the,     locomotive, 

40. 
Royal     Mail     Steam- I'acket     Co., 

59- 
Royal          William,          steamship, 

crosses    the  Atlantic,    49. 
Rozier,      Pilatre      de,      aeronaut, 

116,    119. 
Russia,      railways      of,      66,     90; 

Siberian   Railway,   92. 


s. 


Sadler,   aeronaut,    118,    120. 

St.    Gothard    Tunnel,    completed, 

,  85- 
Salva,      experiments      with      the 

electric  telegraph,    103. 

Samson,    the,    locomotive,   41. 

Sans    Pareil,    Hackworth's    loco- 
motive,  38. 

Santos-Uumont,       Alberto,       114, 

134,    135- 
Savannah,       steamship,       crosses 

Atlantic,    48. 
Schilling,     experiments    with    the 

electric   telegraph,    105. 
Scotia,      steamship,      trans-Atlan- 
tic  record,    54. 
Scotte's   motor  car,    167. 
Sedan   chair,   the,    15. 
Self-moving    carriages,    150. 
Semaphore,      the,      invented      by 

Popham,    101. 
S'erico,    tea-ship,    46. 
Serpollet's     steam-carriage,      167, 

176. 
Shrewsbury    and    Chester    High- 

flyer,    mail-coach,    25. 
Siberian    Railway,    92. 
Sidewalks,   moving,    196. 
Sirius,     steamship,     crosses      the 

Atlantic,   50 
Slaby-Arco     system     of     wireless 

telegraphy,     113. 
Spain,    railways   of,    66. 
Stage-coaches,     early     opposition 

to,    1 1  ;   first,    15,    16. 
Steam-carriages,     45,      163,      174, 

179. 
Steamships,     the     first,    44;     first 

transatlantic,   47. 
Steinheil,    experiments    with    the 

electric    telegraph,    105. 


Stephenson,  George,  experi- 
ments with  the  locomotive, 
34;  engineer  of  Stockton  eV 
Darlington  Ry.,  36;  The 
Rocket,  38. 

Stephenson,  Robert,  locomotive 
builder,  87. 

Stockton  &  Darlington  Ry.,  32, 
36. 

Stone,  application  of,  in  con- 
struction of  tramways,  30. 

Storage   batteries,    180. 

Stourbridge  Lion,  first  locomo- 
tive run  in  the  United  States, 
87. 

Street    railways,    182. 

Subways,  London,  182,  186, 
192;  New  York,  193. 

Sud   Express,    85. 

Suez,  mail  route  across  the,  55; 
railway  to  Alexandria,  57. 

Suez   Canal,   the,   59. 

Summer's    steam-carriage,     166. 

Surrey    Railway,    32. 

Sweden,  railways  of,   66,  90. 

Swindon    Junction    Hotel,    84. 

T. 

Tally-ho,   stage-coach,    68. 

'Leaking,    tea-ship,    46. 

Tea-ships,   annual   race   of,   46. 

Telegraph,    The,    mail-coach,    24. 

Telegraph,  the,  96;  in  France, 
109;  in  Great  Britain,  108;  in 
the  United  States,  no. 

Telegraphy,  ocean,  136;  wire- 
less, in. 

Telephone,    the,     141. 

Telford,    Thomas,    engineer,    26. 

Thames    tunnel,    the,     187. 

Tharp,     H.     S.,     early     bicyclist, 

154- 

Time-table,    early    railway,    67. 
Tissandier,    aeronaut,     125,     131. 
Toll-gate,    institution    of  the,    13. 
T-rail,    first   used,   88.  _ 
Train,    George    Francis,    attempt 

to  introduce  street  railways  in 

London,   184. 
Tramways,    30,     182. 
Trevethick,      Richard,      inventor, 

34,    163. 
Trivector,     the,     primitive     form 

of   bicycle,    151. 
Turbine,    the   steam,    62. 
Turbinia,     experimental     turbine 

steamer,   64. 


204 


THE   STORY   OF   RAPID   TRANSIT 


Turnpike  Act,    1633,    13. 
Twentieth    Century  Limited,   ex- 
press trains,   89. 

U. 

Underground  railways,  Boston, 
192;  Berlin,  192;  London, 
182,  186,  192;  New  York,  193. 

Union  Coach,    stage-coach,    68. 

United  States,  first  railways  in 
the,  86;  railways  of,  speed  of 
trains,  85,  86,  88;  Empire  State 
Express,  83. 

V. 

Velocipede,    the,    151. 

Verne,       Jules,       "Around       the 

World   in    Eighty   Days,"    92. 
Victoria,     Queen,     and     Atlantic 

Cable,   139. 

Ville  de  Paris,   balloon,    130. 
Ville   d  Orleans,   balloon,    128. 
Viper,  British  torpedo  destroyer, 

64. 


W. 

Wallace,    Richard,    balloon,    130. 

Watson,  Dr.,  experiments  with 
electricity,  102. 

Watt,   James,   inventor,    34. 

Weber,  experiments  with  the 
electric  telegraph,  105. 

West  Indies,  improved  commu- 
nication with  the,  59. 

\\heatstone,  experiments  with 
the  telephone,  142;  experi- 
ments with  the  electric  tele- 
graph, 105. 

White    Star    Line,    60. 

Wireless   Telegraphy,    in. 

Wise,    American    aeronaut,    122. 

Wolfmuller    motor   cycle,    161. 

Wridgway,  early  bicyclist,  154, 
159- 


Y. 

Young,  Arthur,  on  the  condi- 
tion of  the  public  roads,  13; 
on  the  electric  telegraph,  103. 


(D 


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